Jesus #3: He Has Declared the Father — In the Bosom of the Father (John 1:18)

Jesus is the only One who has seen God and made Him known. In this third message of the Jesus series, Dr. William P. Hohman builds the whole sermon on John 1:18: no one has seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared Him. He teaches that a finite mind cannot figure out an infinite God, so believers need revelation, close fellowship and a renewed awe of Jesus to stand firm in a troubled day.

This message continues from Jesus#2 He is The Scriptures. Below you will find the full video, a structured summary, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline and practical steps for the week.

Sermon at a Glance

This is part three of a six-part series at NTC Ministries simply called Jesus. It runs about 70 minutes and ends with a prayer of commitment. Pastor Hohman recaps the first two messages: Jesus always was, He created everything, and He is the Scriptures. Then he slows down on a single verse at the end of John’s prologue.

His conviction is that the whole of John 1:1–18 opens up once verse 18 is understood, and that every later story in John’s Gospel points back to it. The message blends word study with his own experience of God’s presence.

Seeing Who Jesus Really Is

Pastor Hohman begins with a memory. Before The Passion of the Christ was released, a local theater held a preview for pastors, and he went. He found it eye-opening in its raw emotion. Yet many men died by Roman crucifixion, he notes, and many women gave birth naturally like Mary. The question is not whether Jesus was born or died. The question is who Jesus really is.

That, he says, is the point of the whole series. Comparing our understanding to God is like pouring a glass of water into the ocean and thinking the glass is the ocean. It does not change the ocean, and it barely resembles it. So there must be revelation, a new birth, for real understanding of who Jesus is to come.

He believes this is urgent because people are easily offended today. He pictures someone offended at being told his neglected new car needs washing. Jesus warned that because of lawlessness the love of many would grow cold, and the only way to live above it is a real revelation of Jesus Christ.

Some may say the opening of the series is basic, but he points to Hebrews 6:1–3. The word translated leave, he explains, means to grow up from the elementary principles of Christ, adding that we will do this if God permits. That permission, he teaches, is revelation from God. A finite mind cannot comprehend an infinite being on its own.

Four Gospels, One Jesus: Why John Begins in Eternity

He describes the four Gospels as one fourfold gospel. Matthew, Mark and Luke are the synoptic Gospels, which he explains means to see together. If an accident happened at an intersection, police would ask witnesses on all four corners what they saw and piece together the full picture. That is why it matters to read all four. The table below follows his description.

John stands apart. He writes a narrative, but he begins by declaring that Jesus is God, and he shows the greatness of God in every story. Pastor Hohman points out that John was the closest to Jesus: out of the seventy sent out, twelve were chosen as apostles, three formed an inner circle, and of those three John was the one who leaned on His breast.

How you see Jesus, he says, shapes how you talk about Him. In John 1:26–27, John the Baptist says he is not worthy to loose the sandal strap of the One coming after him. Years later, on the island of Patmos, John saw Jesus with eyes like a flame of fire and feet like fine brass (Revelation 1:13–15). That is who Jesus was to him.

Pastor Hohman asks whether Jesus is that to us. If He becomes only a religious icon, we grow cold and stop hearing Him. That is why Jesus told the church in Ephesus that, for all its good works, it needed to return to its first love (Revelation 2:4–5), the awe of the relationship. We need to see Jesus not only in the Bible but in other people too.

No One Has Seen God: The Mind-Bending Creator

To understand John’s first eighteen verses, he says, we have to begin with verse 18. The church read John 1:18 aloud together: “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” He draws out two statements about God: He is invisible to the human eye, and Someone has made Him visible.

To show how far God is beyond our minds, he walks through figures he looked up. Voyager 1, launched in 1977 and traveling about 38,000 miles an hour, will only now reach one light-day from Earth, roughly 16 billion miles, after some 49 years. The nearest galaxy to ours, Andromeda, is about 2.5 million light-years away, and one light-year is about 5.88 trillion miles. Your mind cramps, he says, and yet some people want to intellectualize Jesus, who created it all.

Someone once asked Augustine where God was before the heavens were created; the answer was that He was in Himself. God is the only self-contained being. His sovereignty means He needs nothing and no one to exist. That is why Scripture tells us not to lean on our own understanding but to acknowledge Him in all our ways, and He will direct our paths (Proverbs 3:5–6).

The same is true of His love and holiness. People think they are holy because they avoid certain sins, but we cannot even fathom what holiness really is. Pastor Hohman describes a morning around four o’clock when he was praying alone in the church’s chapel. The presence of God came like lightning and drove him to the floor. He wept as he never had, not from pain but from encountering Someone beyond anything he could imagine.

Others watched through the chapel windows, unable to come in. After that visitation, he says, the church held services twice a day for about two years, and the shortest service lasted five hours. It was not mostly preaching. It was letting God reveal who He is, and being in awe of the eternal Creator who chose us because He wanted to express His love to us.

In the Bosom of the Father

Next he explains the phrase “in the bosom of the Father.” The Greek word, he teaches, speaks of a shared relationship: close communion and fellowship. It does not mean one person inside another. Jesus was always face to face with the Father.

He shows this from Luke 16:19–26, the account of the rich man and Lazarus. When the beggar died, angels carried him to Abraham’s bosom. That did not mean he went into Abraham; it meant he was in close fellowship with him, near enough to talk. The same word, Pastor Hohman adds, can describe a bay of the sea where a town is built, a safe harbor. The bosom of the Father is a close, safe and good place.

He compares it to the Mount of Transfiguration, when Peter, James and John saw Jesus with Moses and Elijah, and Peter told the Lord it was good for them to be there (Matthew 17:1–4). They had never been that close before. Are you satisfied with where you are, he asks, or do you want to be closer?

Israel knew God’s acts, but Moses knew His ways (Psalm 103:7). Moses was in fellowship, in the bosom of the Lord. Healing, deliverance and provision are by-products of God, Pastor Hohman says, but you need Him. That is the difference between religion and being born again as a child of God who knows Him as Father.

He links this to love. God so loved the world (John 3:16), but the world did not love Him back. In John 21:20, Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved, a love that John returned. Jesus said that if anyone loves Him, he will keep His word, and the Father and Son will make their home with him (John 14:23).

When we stay close, His voice is strong. When we stop doing what He asks, or do what He does not want, His voice grows quieter until we no longer hear it. “It’s the proximity,” Pastor Hohman says. You are either in His bosom or you are not.

He Has Declared Him

The last part of verse 18 says the Son “has declared Him.” Pastor Hohman explains that the Greek verb was used by ancient writers when they were interpreting a divine mystery, explaining to people what they could not understand on their own. There is no exact English equivalent, he says. It is where we get the idea of drawing out the meaning of the Scriptures.

So when he reads his Bible, he asks the Father to speak and looks for Jesus in the text, because the only way to hear and know the Father is through Jesus, the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). He repeats the verse from the previous message, John 5:39–40: the leaders searched the Scriptures thinking they had eternal life, but were not willing to come to Him.

When Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus said flesh and blood had not revealed it, but His Father, and on this revelation He would build His church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matthew 16:15–18). Pastor Hohman teaches that a great falling away comes when people have no revelation of who Jesus is. Jesus warned that many would say, Lord, did we not do this in Your name, and hear, I never knew you (Matthew 7:22–23).

Israel was meant to make God known to the nations but could not tell the Gentiles about a Father they never knew. At Sinai they promised, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do” (Exodus 19:8), and broke their word the same day. Jesus did everything Adam and Israel were supposed to do. He only did what He saw the Father do (John 5:19), because He lived in intimacy with Him.

None of us can live a perfect life, Pastor Hohman admits. What we do is stay in fellowship with God through Jesus. He who began a good work in us will complete it (Philippians 1:6). Jesus invites all who labor and are heavy laden to come to Him for rest (Matthew 11:28–30). We complicate life, he says, when we lose the awe of God.

The Word Expresses the Heart of God

With verse 18 in place, he reads John 1:1–5: in the beginning was the Word. The Greek logos, he teaches, has two primary meanings. First, it is speech, an outward expression from one person to another; Jesus is the outward expression of the Father. Second, it is the inward thought behind the word. When we truly know Him, we sing differently and talk differently, because what is within comes out.

David understood this when he danced before the ark and told Michal he would be even more undignified (2 Samuel 6:14–22). God rides on the clouds by His name YAH (Psalm 68:4), a name Pastor Hohman teaches expresses all that He is. When we open our mouths, we should express some of what He is.

He returns to the Ten Commandments as a declaration of a covenant of marriage: have no one else before Me, do not look for Me in any other image, and honor those who can pass wisdom to you. If he had to retitle the message, he says, it would be “You can’t live on what you understand.” What is impossible with men is possible with God (Luke 18:27).

Jesus says He is coming quickly with His reward, the Alpha and the Omega (Revelation 22:12–13). We do not earn heaven by works, he stresses, but we show our love by doing what He asks. In Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9).

He tells of a skeptic who said he could not believe in a God no one had seen. An elderly believer asked whether he believed in France without going there, and whether he believed he had a brain though no one had seen it. Faith simply says, Jesus, reveal the Father to me. To all who receive Him, He gives the right to become children of God (John 1:10–13). Giving your life to Jesus is not fire insurance, he says; it is how you actually come to know God.

He recalls that after the chapel visitation he emptied his desk into a garbage can and began calling college presidents, ministers and pastors just to pray with them. He reports hearing people on the other end crying, laughing and shouting as God’s presence came. Most Christians, he observes, think their most intimate time with God should happen at church; he does not have his most intimate time with his wife at the mall.

Living It Out This Week

Pastor Hohman ends by inviting everyone to ask Jesus to fill them with His Spirit and let the love of the Father come in. Here are practical steps drawn from this message:

• Read to see Jesus. Before reading Scripture, ask the Father to speak and look for Jesus in the passage, as Pastor Hohman does.
• Stay in the bosom. Guard your nearness to God by doing what He asks; His voice grows faint with distance.
• Return to your first love. If Jesus has become a religious icon, ask Him to restore the awe you once had.
• Acknowledge Him over your understanding. When a problem seems impossible, follow Proverbs 3:5–6 instead of reasoning it out alone.
• Make time with Him away from church. Set aside a private time this week just to talk with God, not only on Sunday.
• Let your words express Him. Like David, let what you know of God come out in how you sing and speak.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Recap of the Jesus series
• 1:10 Opening prayer and The Passion of the Christ
• 3:16 Not whether He died, but who He really is
• 4:25 A glass of water in the ocean
• 7:37 Hebrews 6: growing up from the basics
• 8:43 Matthew, Luke and Mark
• 10:51 What synoptic means
• 12:58 John, the closest to Jesus
• 15:06 Not worthy to loose His sandals
• 17:16 John 1:18: three elements
• 19:21 Voyager and the size of the universe
• 24:39 God is in Himself: His sovereignty
• 26:48 A visitation in the chapel
• 29:59 The meaning of “in the bosom”
• 31:00 Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom
• 33:04 A safe harbor and the Transfiguration
• 35:11 He has declared Him
• 38:28 John 5:39–40 and Peter’s revelation
• 42:38 Moses knew His ways
• 44:41 Reciprocated love and making His home with us
• 47:51 John presents Jesus from eternity
• 51:03 Staying in fellowship and finding rest
• 53:06 John 1:1–5 and the meaning of logos
• 56:13 David’s dance and the name YAH
• 59:30 Revelation 22 and Colossians 2:9
• 1:03:54 John 1:10–13 and the call to know God
• 1:05:56 After the visitation: calling people to pray
• 1:09:05 Closing prayer

Jesus Series

This message is part of the six-part Jesus series at NTC Ministries. Start from the beginning or continue where this one leaves off:

• First message: Jesus #1
• Previous: Jesus#2 He is The Scriptures
• You are here: Jesus #3 — He Has Declared the Father
• Next: Jesus #4 The Light of Life

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does John’s Gospel start differently from the other three?

Pastor Hohman teaches that Matthew, Mark and Luke each begin in a way suited to their readers: a genealogy from Abraham for Jewish readers, the baptism of Jesus for action-minded Romans, and a genealogy from Adam for Gentiles. John, the disciple closest to Jesus, starts before time with the Word who was God. He presents Jesus not from Bethlehem but from eternity, and every later story in his Gospel relates back to that opening.

Why do I hear God’s voice less than I used to?

According to this message, the issue is proximity. When we stay in close fellowship and do what God asks, His voice is strong and clear. When we stop obeying, or do what He does not want, His voice gets quieter and quieter until we no longer hear it. The answer is to come back into the bosom of the Father through Jesus, renewing both obedience and awe.

Is it wrong to want God to heal or provide for me?

No. Pastor Hohman affirms that the impossible happens when we are in awe of God, and that needs are met. But he calls healing, deliverance and provision by-products of knowing God, not the goal. Israel knew God’s acts while Moses knew His ways. The point is to seek Him first, and the blessings follow the relationship.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• John 1:18 — the Son in the bosom of the Father has declared Him
• John 1:1–5 — in the beginning was the Word
• Luke 16:19–26 — Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom
• Hebrews 6:1–3 — growing up from the basics
• Proverbs 3:5–6 — lean not on your own understanding
• Psalm 103:7 — His ways and His acts
• Matthew 16:15–18 — the revelation the church is built on
• John 14:23 — We will make Our home with him
• Colossians 2:9 — the fullness of the Godhead bodily
• John 1:10–13 — the right to become children of God

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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