26th January 2025

The Fullness of Christ

Passage: John 1:14-18, Exodus 34:4-6, Colossians 2:9
Service Type:

The Lord Jesus Christ contains within Himself the complete fullness of God’s deity in bodily form. When we receive Christ as Saviour, we receive all of God’s grace and truth – not merely a portion. Just as God revealed Himself to Moses as full of steadfast love and faithfulness, these same divine attributes are perfectly expressed in Jesus. There is no need to seek additional spiritual experiences beyond Christ, for in Him dwells all the fullness of God. This foundational truth provides assurance of salvation and forms the basis for genuine Christian fellowship across denominational lines.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Well, it’s good to, it’s good to feel we’re getting ahead into January and the year is underway and I’m wondering what would be ahead for this year? What things are you looking forward to most? It might be to start a new day of education. I know that when you’re a kid going up into the next year was a big deal and or going to the first time you went to university and found yourself in the more adult style of education. This year I’m hoping some stage or other to have some holiday time, a little holiday time I take a snippet here and there and that’s because I’ve had some very good holidays, one of which was down in Tasmania where our family went down and we were staying on a

[00:00:55] farm. There’s a road in Sheffield called Brown’s Road because it leads to Brown’s farm and the Brown family have a lot of brown cows and it’s a big dairy farm and we went to stay with them because we’ve been there before and it was a very beautiful time of relaxation and friendship but it reminded me as I went there of the first time going to that farm as we drove up Brown’s Road there was a big embankment, a sort of carvage into the hillside to let the road go through and at the top of the hillside there was a lot of grass on which grazed an animal. It wasn’t a cow, it was a goat. This goat was tethered so that it could get all the rich grass at the top of where it

[00:01:50] was, but the goat was a little bit too endeavouring and fell off and hung itself to death without reaching the ground, it was hanging, dangling and when we arrived, they told us that the name of the goat was Michel and Michel and I were arriving and here’s this goat that itself. So I immediately strung to the conclusion that the goat recognised they had no chance of equalling up to Michelle. She’s not smiling. But the people on the farm were very gracious and they said we will choose another animal to have the name Michelle. So she had a cow named after her. It was just a young calf and eventually that was a special animal that she could take care of. I was fascinated with this great big dairy farm and it had a circular thing that the cows came in and were milked and then let out. And it suddenly occurred to me that there’s a way that our farming people who were very good at their

[00:03:00] farming ordered an arrange for the cows. And it was a bit of an illustration of the Bible. It sounds like a bad illustration to give using cows but just let me follow. And at the end of the service if you think that I could adjust my illustration a bit and make it better, I’m always glad to hear. But in the Bible you’ve got two parts. And the early part is called the Old Testament and the newer part is called the New Testament. And there’s an ongoing question in many people’s minds as to which one is the most authoritative or which one you listen to most. Or do you not listen to the old one because you’ve got a new or both the word of God which is the truth that both the word of God. And the cows and how they got on and that cow, that farm and it is actually a pretty good illustration. Let me see if I can set it out. Well the thing about the cows is that everyday they get

[00:04:01] themselves milked. And to be milked, they have to be suffering the restrictions of the fences and the gates. And if there’s a part of the cow’s experience that is similar to humanity, it is that we have laws. The laws are from God and they’ve never been taken away but they’re laws that he instituted and the Old Testament’s big on. And the cows have these fences and they have the gates and before they get milked and get brought down into the big rotary dairy, they can’t go onto whatever paddock they like and they have to be moved on down. They actually like being milked and so they welcome moving through the gates down into the big dairy and as I get onto the dairy there’s a farmer here who’s helping them step right up and they’ve put something around their necks and shut little, little gate behind them, is all what they do in order to attach the other equipment

[00:05:03] for there to be the milk gained. If they didn’t have those gates, if they didn’t have the fences, they kept in and special paddocks, they would go on and get the ones that would have been milked and all ready to come. Then it wouldn’t happen properly, but for the purpose of them delivering the milk, once they’ve delivered the milk, they let them out, and they’re free. But there was a purpose in those fences and every now and then a stubborn one might give a kick. And the men who put on the other equipment, they had to be a bit cautious, but generally speaking the cows were aware of the fact that the whole set up was for their benefit. What they did, actually, with the farmers, was to have a thing for them to eat while they’re getting milked. And so they got provided for by not only while they were under the law of the fences and the gate and the milking, they also were

[00:05:57] being provided for to have their best existence. Then at the end of it all, when the others were taken off and the gates were swung open, they were given a broader sphere into which to go, where they could graze as they wished. It occurred to me it’s just like how God takes care of us humans and has so done right across history that he had his laws and he had the Jewish religion that was a necessity. Jesus actually said salvation is from the Jews. You can’t be back when Jesus was ministering to the woman of the world, you made it clear, you can’t become a Christian, you can’t be right with God. You can’t be someone who worships in spirit and truth, except you do it through the Jewish religion. They were like gates and fences that the whole world got shut into. Nobody got to be close to God except by coming and being a Jew. You could be a convert to the Jewish nation even if you weren’t Jewish

[00:07:00] in blood, God allowed that. But there were these fences and these ways of being directed and that you would understand the truth. And you got fed by that, just like the cows were when they come. They actually enjoyed being milking because they got rid of their load and they also had a big feed at the same time and then they got let free. And it’s like that with the New Testament. If you follow the advance of revelation, if you follow the progress of God teaching humanity through the Bible and you move from the Old Testament to the New Testament, you move to a part where you are freer than what the Jewish people were in the Old Testament days. And the freedom is not a freedom because the whole milking process isn’t necessary, it’s what God wants of us. He wants to learn to be righteous. He wants us to learn to be able to walk with Him and He wants us to learn that we don’t

[00:07:57] have a righteousness of our own. We only have that which He provides. And the whole apparatus of the farm was necessary for the cows to get through it and to do what they needed to do. And if you’ve ever seen a poor cow that can’t get rid of this load of milk and it’s getting really heavy with milk, they need to have someone help them. Well that’s how the laws of God work in our lives. They’re good things, but they’re good things to lead you to a special truth, and that is that God has provided the way for you to keep them, and the way for you to be forgiven even though you might have failed to keep them. And it is in a person, the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s what the Bible is about. In the beginning of John’s Gospel, we’ve already been looking at the fact of who Jesus is, and he’s with God, and he was God, and he

[00:08:53] came into the world. And down in chapter 1, verse 14, the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. And we have seen His glory, glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. And what is actually being revealed there is that the thing that God always wanted us to have, the tucker that the cows needed to eat, was necessary for them to be fenced in and taken to the place where not only were they giving the milk, but they were fed as the farmer would want, with all the extra, extra goodies in it. And so God has led us through the knowledge of our sins, through the law, to come to a place where something wonderful is provided. And it’s provided by the Son of God, Jesus. And Jesus, in His person, actually has all the goodies that God is. He’s not just someone who is the son, you know, I was listening and talking in the home group on Friday night, and we were

[00:09:58] talking about the fact of Jesus. And the topic came up, you know, how do you understand Jesus? Is He one-third of God? So Jesus is the Son, but there’s the Father, and there’s the Holy Spirit. Does that mean that Jesus is like a third of deity? It’s true that there is the Son and there is the Father, and it would be wrong for you to think that there is only one entity who comes with a different face on, that’s wrong. But Jesus and the Father and the Son, what Jesus actually is, listen to this very carefully, that He is all that God is, in a human scenario. And our passage says something very interesting. It says He’s full of grace and truth, and they’re the two biggest descriptors of God in the Old Testament. The book of Exodus chapter 34 verse 6 has a list of the characteristics of God, but the final two are the two that is grace and truth, or in the Hebrew version there’s other ways of expressing it.

[00:11:08] But that’s what Jesus is. And so this passage goes on to say, John will witness about Him and tried out, this is He of whom I said He that comes after me ranks before me. Because He was before me Jesus pre existed in his pre-intercalation before John the Baptist was born. Remember, John the Baptist was born before Jesus was born. So an actual fact, as the eternal Son of God in Heaven, He pre existed John the Baptist, even from the beginning of John the Baptist’s as birth. Verse 16, for from his fullness we have all received, talking about Jesus, not John the Baptist, from his fullness we’ve all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, but truth and grace come through Jesus Christ. Grace and truth come through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, the only true God who is at the father side. He has made him known. Now the real question is, the person that Jesus came.

[00:12:19] Do you look at him as one-third of God and there’s more about God that’s kept aside? Some denominations teach that you have one business with Jesus and that’s good for you and get you in the door. But there’s another business, step over here, with the Holy Spirit and that’s another work of God. Now that’s completely wrong. It’s right that there is is a work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but it’s not separate. There’s only one God and one expression of God that isn’t just a third, he’s an expression of the entirety of God. So we can turn to other verses, I’m not sure whether I gave them to our friends down the back, but we can turn to other verses in Colossians. And do you have Colossians verses there? Not sure I gave you, but I’ll see if you can find. Let’s put him on the spot there to find some Colossians verses. Chapter 1, for example, and I probably bought

[00:13:23] my wrong exercise book, but Colossians 1, and I think it’s about verse 9. Let’s see what you actually get. A book of Colossians. It’s not my second one on the list. There you go. Is that Colossians? Yeah, 1-29, okay. Alright, so basically what it says is that in Jesus, the whole business of the Godhead is in him bodily. The whole business of the Godhead is in him bodily. See if you can find that verse. And it’s the fact that in the incarnate Christ, it wasn’t just that the second person of the Trinity got into a human body, but it is that in his incarnation, all God is, is in Jesus. He’s still the Son, and as the Son, he prays to the Father. So it’s not a dissolving of the Son-Father identity, but it is the fact that the incarnation has brought all that God is, and that is what Jesus is. See if I can spot the verse. Thank you. That’s chapter 2, verse 1, and then it’s

[00:14:52] yeah. Okay, we’ll look at it one at a time. What’s chapter 2, verse 1? 9. Oh, verse 9. Hang on a moment, you just had something good then. Yeah, it is chapter 2, verse 9. For in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. Now you get the bodily part means that Jesus in his human incarnation has all the God is in him. Now you could run into a mistake there to think it’s really just the Father, and he’s put on a different mask. And in heaven to the angels, he says, I’m the Father, do this. And then he comes to earth and he’s in baby Jesus, and he’s just the Father with a different mask on. That’s not what the whole gospel message is about. He definitely is the Son of God, but in him coming on taking humanity because of how the Son is to the Father, and the Son is the complete expression of the Father, so in his coming to earth he then is in a bodily form the whole

[00:15:58] of the fullness of the deity. So in Jesus you don’t have any greater opportunity or greater expression of God that you could go to. There’s no becoming a Christian long enough to somehow go to a higher step than having Jesus in dwelling in you. When you’ve got Christ, you’ve got the most and the best, and you’ve got the lot. For in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. This really speaks to a lot of the doctrines people have who tend to section off what you get from Jesus to what you get from the Holy Spirit, or what you get because you pray to the Father. I know it’s difficult to get our heads around, but the truth is that in Christ you have the most. When it says fullness, pleirosa, it’s that word that is the opposite of kenosis, the emptiness, I’m filling up to the total. The fullness of the deity dwelling bodily. If you’ve come to Christ and a part of coming to Christ,

[00:17:08] which John’s Gospel is, that when you receive him you become a son of God, it means you’ve got the lot. Don’t let anybody ever teach you that you need some further experience that is away from Christ. There’s only one act of God for humanity to be saved, and it’s what God did in Christ. When you’ve received Christ, go home tonight and look up that first chapter of John that talks about receiving Christ. Notice it says if you receive Christ you become the sons of God. And although we’re sons of God in the sense from creation, as I’ve been saying other Sunday mornings, we’re sons of God because we’re part of the human race, we’re not sons of God in the deepest sense until you come to Christ. But when you’ve come to Christ, you’ve got the lot! Even though you may not be knowing how to work with that, you may not be knowing how to let it work out in you, and you may realise that you’re needing help. Tonight I’m going to be talking on

[00:18:15] the ways in which Jesus is a help to us, and exactly what happened to him can be what we experience as well, in terms of walking with God. That’s tonight’s message. But the thing to know that there’s nowhere further to go than Jesus. And very often in religion, you get people who are trying to identify where the real action is, and you get some religionists who say that way of talking, particularly the way I’m talking, is having theology to it all. Now it’s Christ who does it all, but it’s not a choice between Christ and theology. I remember one man who used to teach to people that you’ve become a Christian by receiving Christ, now you need to have another experience. It’s where you receive the Holy Spirit. And this was at a big meeting. I had friends take me to it. It was at the State High School Hall, and this fellow was a dynamic preacher. There’s no doubt about his fluency and his

[00:19:21] delivery was wonderful. He was actually jumping off the stage and getting back up and making great statements and everybody was watching and listening. But he made a statement that convinced me in the opposite direction of what he wanted to do. He said, we just preach God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But that doesn’t set very well with people who try and say, don’t preach theology. There’s no better theology than talking about God the Father, God the Spirit, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. That is theology. But theology and religion could be made separate because religion is just our human ideas of things and religion is just our trying to get God in our lives and sometimes we do it a good way and sometimes we we get mixed up and led astray. Your religion can get in error, but I want to tell you that what good theology will do is keep you away from error. This good theology is what I’m

[00:20:25] now saying to you, for in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, and when you receive Christ, obviously his body doesn’t jump into you, but you receive him spiritually, as Jesus explained to Nicodemus, you have got a lot. And one of the first ways to get people to be secure in their salvation is not to cast a doubt that they’ve only got a half, or they’ve only got a third, or there’s some other thing. If only I would have a special ceremony at the church, and we as Baptists can be in danger of saying that you haven’t got it all, really, until you’re baptized. There are some denominations that say that, we call them the wet ones. The dry ones is where you don’t make baptism necessary to be saved. They’re just ways of talking. But the truth of the matter is, baptism doesn’t do anything except get you wet. Baptism is a way of confessing Jesus, which is what it’s about, and it’s a good thing. But nonetheless, when you’ve got Jesus,

[00:21:31] you’ve got a lot. Does that make sense? Is that something you understand? For in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. Well, let’s talk about Jesus and who he is and how that’s the case. In the Old Testament, there’s a very famous passage in Exodus chapter 34 and verse 6. And Exodus 34, we’ll read verses 4 to 6 there on your screen. That’s about Moses. And Moses had this deep desire to go deeper in knowing God. That’s a good thing to have. And he asked for the Lord to reveal more of himself to him. Now, what did God reveal? And then we’re going to put that in the light of what I’ve just been talking about, Jesus. Moses got the two tablets. This is about the tablets with the Ten Commandments written on. Like the first time, the first ones have been broken and God made him bring up a second set of tablets. So he’d rewrite them on the same thing rewritten. And he rose early in the morning and went up the Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him. And he took

[00:22:40] his in his hand the two tablets of stone, the ones recut. And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord proclaimed the name of the Lord and stood there with him. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord. The Lord a God God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and the idea of love and, if we go further a little bit on the text please, and faithfulness. Those final two attributes of what God is, love and faithfulness. This is written in the Old Testament originally in Hebrew and there is a Greek translation thereof and what you discover is that depending on which language you’re reading it adds a lot to the semantic range, means the range of ideas that could be meant by these words. But what they mean in Hebrew and what the Greek equivalents mean includes the idea that

[00:23:43] the love is actually what comes translated out as grace, and the faithfulness comes out as love and faithfulness, or love and mercy, love and grace and the faithfulness is the idea that God is dinky-die and he does what he says and he’ll stay like that. He won’t be on your side one time and then change it later and not be with you. And the actual meaning of the word in the Hebrew, if you look in the Greek version of the Old Testament passage, includes a number of things like truth and reliability and stability. And so it’s the idea that God will never change who he is. He’s something you can rest yourself on because of his faithfulness to be him and not change him. I want to tell you, this is a wonderful thing when you go through difficult troubles and you wonder where God is. This verse is saying he’s full of steadfast love. Some of the ways

[00:24:53] that word comes in is the work of just said, very famous words. It can mean God’s choosing. It can mean God’s love. It can mean his steadfast loyalty. And some 1500 theologian writers say it’s about his love and loyalty to keep his covenant. And when you came to Christ you came to Jesus as the Saviour and you asked him to be your personal Saviour, at that moment that moment, you came into a covenant relationship with God, and he keeps his covenants. Even if you did go off the track, he’s not going to stop keeping his side of it. He’s not going to stop loving you. This word that means that he’s someone who goes on loving. It’s not dependent on your performance that it doesn’t need you always to be perfect. It’s a fantastic thing to rest rest and realise that God’s acceptance of you does not hinge on your perfect obedience.

[00:25:54] He wants you to be obedient and he’ll give you a spanking if you’re not. But he loves you nonetheless and his steadfast love is a covenant-keeping love. The faithfulness is the solidity of his promise, the absolute rock that you can rest on that when you put your trust in him and he made you a son of God, he’s not going to reverse it. And the actual being, becoming a Christian and then learning to live it is a very awkward, difficult thing and many of us have ups and downs and failures and you’d be surprised how many people who, when they come and talk to you quietly, part of the problem they have is they wonder whether God’s forgiven them because they had a hiccup. And I’m here to tell you that the very deepest, most real attribute of the very God of heaven is his steadfast love and his faithfulness, his stability, that he will never quit loving you and he

[00:26:54] will never quit being faithful to his promises to you. And when you take Jesus as your saviour, you take him not on the basis of any of your promises of what you’ll do. You’ve got to be willing to repent, but it’s not that God always knows we’re able to carry it out, perfectly. on the basis of his solidity in keeping his promise. Now those two words, I get moved by this because it’s one of the deepest things of the Old Testament you could take on board. Those words for kesed and the word for loyalty, faithfulness. When you put them around into English and then translate it to Greek and then translate them in English, they come out as grace and truth. Now let’s go back to our passage in John chapter 1.

[00:27:47] And this passage that we’re looking at this morning, and it talks about Jesus and who he is. I’m not sure whether I arranged my verses right, but this one that has the fullness of the Godhead in him bodily, this one, the Bible tells us that he’s full of grace and truth. It’s just putting into our English language through the Greek, the things of the two major attributes of God, what God is, full of covenant-keeping grace or loyalty, stability, always who he says he is, truth. They’re the two things that Jesus is full of and Jesus will always be the best example of.

[00:28:43] And if you have Jesus, this one who’s very person has got all that God is in himself and you have him and you invited him to be your savior and you asked him to be the Lord of your life and you opened your person to let him by his spirit dwell in you, you have all the grace and truth that God is living in you as a gift, not dependent on how wonderful you were, totally dependent on his promise and his faithfulness to keep his promise and his grace to go on blessing you even though you might not deserve it. The nature of covenant-keeping grace is when God has made the covenant and whether you stay doing everything right or not, there’s the verse 17, the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now that verse is saying an enormous lot because what the law could give was a bit like the

[00:29:54] fences and the gates that herded the cows and the things across their necks while they’re there to get milked, that’s like the law. Does that to us? It’s a good law in the sense it’s true and it’s spiritual, it’s nothing wrong with the law but it’s not the whole story. The New Testament adds the story of what God then did by sending his son, there is no higher representation of the characteristics of God than Jesus. And if you’ve come to him, you’ve come to the peak, you’ve come to the summit, you’ve come to the totality, not a little flag at the top of the top, you’ve come to all that God is in his wonderful nature, the fullness of the Godhead bodily came into you.

[00:30:51] because you receive Jesus. Your receiving of Him was your trusting Him, your faith in Him, and His gift of the Holy Spirit to bring His presence to you and live in you. And the union of us with Christ, the indwelling of Christ, the receiving of Christ, is the major doctrine to hang on to, whereby we have stability, where we have assurance, and we have something to base our lives on. The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And forgive my illustration of the cows, it can’t be exactly appropriate all the way through.

[00:31:44] But I used to watch that milking process, and living on the farm, that’s where our base was when I went out to doell seed in lifestyles, we came back again. I loved to watch how the farmers ran that. And I used to love to watch the cows. As they went out free, they loved coming in because they liked, as they were going to get fed. And the law of the Old Testament will feed you too. But there is something in the freedom that the New Testament gives, that those cows at least expressed to me in an illustration, as they went out to be allowed

[00:32:22] to feed everywhere. And one of the features of a genuine Christian faith is it doesn’t put all sorts of type procedures on you as the only way you’ve got to do it this way. I used to like my university days when in the Christian groups that I was in, I was the president of one of them, and we had people who were from all different groups. And while the Gospel was the centre of what we did in that group, everybody had a welcome. And if there was someone who wanted to make it just one thing, I’d try and stop them. Because that would rule out. I had friends who were in all sorts of different denominations that wouldn’t agree with me. It didn’t matter, they did love Christ, and they did love the Gospel. And while you have the Gospel at the centre of your group, or your church, where the chief thing that gives a person a welcome is that they’ve responded to the Gospel because

[00:33:26] it’s what you want to happen for them. And it doesn’t matter if there are some who are this, and there are some who are that, and there are some who’ve been brought up in very strict traditions and frown every time they see you, because you don’t keep them. If they love Jesus, then you and they have something in common, it’s right at the heart of our fellowship. We’ve been having, last year, 2023, was the year where we prayed to God to do something about the fellowship, and it happened. And in the way people stay, talk and talk and talk. Sometimes people don’t leave here after the morning service for two hours later. I get out quicker than that because I’m usually tired, but I’ve been amazed. And the inspiration of the higher grounds, just the availability to allow people to enjoy coffee. One of the good things about that is that when we used to take people around

[00:34:27] the back, some of them passed their sitting cars, and then they got tempted to jump into the cars and go home and not bother. So if we give you coffee now in the church, then you get to stay a bit longer. But that fellowship, it is one of the features of our church. Do you know, I’ve just received word this morning that there’s an idea to put on another home group, and they wanted to know about what night, and whether that’s a good idea. So far we’ve picked on Wednesday, because there’s the least number of home groups on Wednesday. Tuesday there’s three that people go to, there’s one on Tuesday, no, yeah, Tuesday there’s three, was it? Anyway, different nights the home groups are on, but we have the least on Wednesday, so we’re going to start another one on Wednesday. And people are wanting to join. There’s something going on in this church, which is a fellowship that I think is the

[00:35:25] Spirit given, because we’ve made Jesus the centre of the church. The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And that’s the key to where fellowship is found. All one in Christ Jesus. At Tambourine Mountain, the conventions, when they were Keswick conventions, used to put a banner, all one in Christ Jesus, because it’s one of the banners of Keswick teaching. But they’ve taken away Keswick teaching from there as far as I know, and so it’s not necessarily all invited equally. And the same is true in a lot of places. It’s why we want to stay a gospel church, and if you were to come to me and say, well, I don’t believe in some of the things you do, we say, well, you’re still welcome. We won’t let you be a member and change things if you don’t understand the same way we do. But nonetheless, the fellowship of the church is based on being all one in

[00:36:29] Christ Jesus. The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Let me pray. Father, thank You for our church, and I thank You, Heavenly Father, Lord my Peaceiya Message. Lord, I thank You for that beautiful farm and those people who looked after the cows, and they’d come to understand the animals, they needed the fences and they needed the gates. But then they also needed to feed the cows, and they needed to let them free. And I thank you Father for our church, that we can feed people, and we can teach them the Gospel and we can offer a fellowship, and also we can let them free. And we give you praise for that. We pray that you bless that model, and that you bless the happening, and keep on bringing people in from outside to join, we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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