Jesus, the Creator of All

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Yesterday, Charla spent the day decorating for Christmas and didn’t get much of it done while the kids were awake. And so once they were all in bed, she went to finish. And she asked me, where’s baby Jesus?

I don’t know. I thought you had him. We talked about Mary.

When he was 12 years old and they got halfway back to Nazareth and realized he wasn’t with them. And talked about how would you like to be the one that lost God’s son? Right?

It’s hard to live that one down. But we have these nativity figurines. We have a few different ones.

We have a stuffed one. We have a nesting doll one. They’re all over.

And for some reason, Carly Jo, who we call Mama Junior at home because she likes to make every step Charla does and try to be helpful, Jojo collects all the baby Jesuses and carries them off somewhere. I don’t know if she’s taking care of them or what. But we didn’t have baby Jesus.

We can’t seem to keep baby Jesus in the manger at our house. And I thought about that last night. That’s a really good illustration for what I’m going to talk to you about this morning.

We’re going to spend a lot of time over the next month or so talking about the birth of Jesus. And most Decembers I do spend some time talking about the birth of Jesus. Sometimes I’ll do it from Matthew or Luke where it explicitly tells the story.

Sometimes I’ll talk about the birth of Jesus from other passages, just to avoid repeating myself quite so much. And that’s what I’m going to do this year, is talk to you about the birth of Jesus, the coming of Jesus from the Gospel of John. Now John was probably written a few years later than Matthew and Luke, and so he doesn’t feel it necessary to go into all the details of what happened in Bethlehem.

He assumes that his readers would have been familiar with that. John instead spends time explaining why what happened in Bethlehem was so important. And I think it’s a problem sometimes when our only exposure to Jesus is the story of Jesus being born in the manger.

It’s an incredible story. It’s a true story. It’s an important story.

But Jesus didn’t come to stay in the manger so we could pull him out and display him one month out of the year. And we perpetually keep him there. We see him forever as that baby in the manger.

He’s just a cute Christmas card kind of story. Jesus is so much more than that. And really the story of what happened at Bethlehem is only important because of who Jesus Christ came to be.

And so ever so often, I love to revisit the Gospel of John. It’s been about five years since I’ve taught on the Gospel of John, the Christmas story from the Gospel of John. Some of you this close after Thanksgiving are probably tired of leftovers.

I’m not serving you leftovers. I come and restudy this material every time, and I learn something new from it every time. But we’re going to spend the next few weeks going through what John says about the coming of Jesus Christ, and why that baby born at Bethlehem was so important, and why we need to take him out of the manger, As important as the manger story is, we need to take him out of the manger and understand who he came to be and who he grew up to be.

And so we’re going to be in John chapter 1 this morning. If you would, turn with me there in your Bibles. If you don’t have a Bible, it’ll be on the screen.

Or if you’re using a device, there’s a link right in our bulletin that’ll get you there. But we’re going to look at the first three verses of the Gospel of John this morning. If you would, stand with me if you’re able to do so without too much trouble as we honor God’s Word together.

John starts out saying this, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

And you may be seated. It’s a short passage, but it packs a punch theologically. And just so there’s no confusion about what we’re talking about with the Word, verse 14 clarifies that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

When it says here the Word, John is talking about Jesus Christ. And so you could, for the sake of clarity, go back and reread it. In the beginning was Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ was with God, and Jesus Christ was God. He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. This is about Jesus Christ. And so we’re going to look and see what John says about Jesus’ coming. And rather than go point by point through this like I typically would do, We’re going to go instead verse by verse, piece by piece through this.

He starts out by saying, in the beginning was the Word. And even the phrasing here is so important and tells us so much about who Jesus is. These three words, in the beginning, that we see in English, there are two books of the Bible that start out with the phrase, in the beginning.

Can anybody tell me what the other one is? Genesis. All right, very good.

They both start out, in the beginning. And if you look at the Greek translation of the Old Testament that they would have had, I know the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, but people at this time would have read the Old Testament in Greek in something called the Septuagint, which was their translation. When you look at the Greek of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament, they both start with the same two words, in arche, in the beginning.

And so what John is doing here, I didn’t bring you here for a Greek lesson, but I’m pointing out to you that what John was doing, He was hearkening back to something they would have been familiar with, his readers would have understood. In the beginning. He’s tying what he’s saying back to Genesis and the creation of everything.

And he says, in the beginning, not just in the beginning of the story, not just in the beginning of Jesus’ life, not just there at Bethlehem, but in the beginning of everything, he says, there was the Word. And this word logos is the word. Logos or logos, however you pronounce it depending on what part of the country you’re from.

It’s a word that means a word or a thought. It’s a word that he picked very deliberately because he could have said, in the beginning, was Jesus Christ. He could have done that. But he picked this word deliberately because it was so full of meaning.

The Greeks would have understood it in the way they used it in their philosophies to describe the mind or the reason behind the universe. If the Greeks were talking about there’s got to be a reason for everything, there’s some, even if they didn’t understand that they were talking about God, but you hear people describe, there’s a higher power, there’s a reason behind all of it that’s higher than us that we don’t understand. The Greeks would have used the word logos to describe that.

And the Jews also put meaning in this word, because in their Greek translation of the Old Testament, this is the word that they used when God was somehow personified in His activities, when they talked about the wisdom of God, when they talked about God’s understanding and God’s speaking, they used this word logos. Again, I’m not Greek. I’m an oaky.

I can write it for you, but as far as pronunciation, I’m doing my best up here. This was a word that carried a lot of weight and a lot of connotations with it.

So when he says Jesus Christ is the Word, he’s already saying here at the beginning, when everything was created at the beginning of all things there was the word jesus christ was there and he is the reason behind the entire universe he is the intelligence he is the the purpose he is the the design behind he’s the one that brought all of this into being so already in just a few short words john wants his readers to understand exactly what he thinks of jesus christ John wants his readers to understand that Jesus Christ was not just a human teacher and on the other side he wants people to understand he wasn’t just he wasn’t just God when Jesus Christ came he he was God he has always been God he will never stop being God by the way if he could stop being God or start being God it means he wasn’t always God and he could never be God because part of being God is being eternal. It’s like trying to have a four-sided triangle, right?

Trying to be God, but not eternally God. You just can’t do it. But God came down and took on a sinless human nature in addition to the God nature.

He didn’t just look like us, He became one of us and dwelt among us. And John wants his readers to understand from the very beginning that what happened at Bethlehem was that the God of this entire universe became one of us without ceasing to be God. And that that person that John walked with for three years, that that person that John knew better than anybody else alive at this point, that person that walked among us was none other than God.

And even the word was here when he says in the beginning was the word. I’m not going to dig into all the tenses and everything, but the way that verb tense works, it’s not saying that he suddenly became God. Bam, he was God.

When I was studying French in high school, our French teacher talked about how verb tenses work, and these are some things that you really don’t think about in English. We just do them. We’ve heard them, and so we just kind of do it instinctually.

You don’t think about it until you’re learning another language. But when you’re talking about something in the past, there are verb tenses that work like a camera, And there are verb tenses that work like a video camera. One is just a snapshot.

It just happened. And one is an ongoing thing. This is one of those video camera kind of verbs when it says was.

In the beginning, not from the beginning, not since the beginning, but already when the beginning came, there was this ongoing existence of Jesus Christ before there was anything else. Jesus Christ has never not existed. The Word was in the beginning.

He existed before the beginning, before creation. Jesus Christ did not suddenly spring into existence at Bethlehem. And then later on in verse 1, he says, and the Word was with God.

Here we have that same verb tense again, that same was, and he was with God. The Word, Jesus Christ, was with God. So before creation, there was already this existing relationship where Jesus Christ was intimately connected with God.

He wants us to understand Jesus Christ was not just another being. He wasn’t just one of the angels. He was there with God before there was anything else.

And I submit to you, that’s why it says in Genesis chapter 1, why it uses the plural. When God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, in Genesis 1. 26. We see this kind of, on the surface, this kind of weird phrasing in Genesis where God, who is singular, talks about Himself in the plural. And some people have said, well, he’s talking about the angels.

Talking to the angels. Let us make man in our image. We’re not made in the image of the angels.

The Bible consistently says we are made in the image of God. And so for the Word to be there with God explains to me why God would say, let us make man in our image and in our likeness. And His presence with God when there was nothing else points to an intimacy that there was just them.

It’s an intimacy with God that no mere created being could ever experience. Now, God created us for fellowship with Him, but you and I will never experience the same oneness with God that the Father and the Son experience with one another. Because even though God invites us into a relationship with Him, into an incredibly close fellowship with Him where we can call Him Father, the Father and the Son, there’s not even really terminology for it.

I was going to say made from the same stuff. They’re cut from the same cloth, but that’s not even a great way to say it because they weren’t created. They just always have been.

But it’s something we cannot ever join them in. John wants us to understand the Word is intimately connected. Jesus is intimately connected with the Father.

And it says at the end of verse 1, and the Word was God. Now the reason for the closeness between the Word and God is that the Word was Himself God. Now this is confusing to people.

The Trinity is notoriously difficult to understand. I’ve studied this for years and years. I’ve written papers on it, and I still feel like I’m just kind of glimpsing through a keyhole at the Trinity.

But I don’t have to fully understand the mechanics of it to believe the Bible teaches it. There’s lots of stuff that God does that I don’t understand. And if I had to understand.

. . By the way, you’ll hear this objection.

Well, I’m not going to believe something I don’t understand. Then I want you to explain to me in intimate detail, in excruciating detail, how the internal combustion engine works, or don’t you dare think about turning that key to drive home. You walk.

Right? And there might be somebody who can, well, I can explain it to you. Okay, then tell me how the cell phone works, or it’s Amish time for you.

Right? No, no, we don’t do that with anything else but God. We don’t use that as an objection for anything else but God.

Oh, I have to understand all of it, or I’m not going to believe. I don’t want to worship a God that I can completely understand. Because if He’s little enough for me to completely understand, He’s not worth worshiping.

But the Bible teaches that there’s one God. It teaches that there are three persons who are called God. It teaches that these three persons are eternally distinct.

It’s not Jesus showing up at one time as the Father, and one time as the Son, and now as the Spirit. No, they’re all three there. How that works is beyond my comprehension, but I just accept it because the Bible says it.

How can he be God and be with God? It’s the same thing as how can he be God and the Son of God? Well, maybe we as Christians need to be more precise with our language.

He’s the Son of God because he is the Son of the Father who is God. But he’s God because he’s God the Son. I don’t know if that clarifies it at all for you.

But some of the confusion comes from, I think, the fact that we refer to the Father just as God without any qualifiers. And that’s okay, but that could be what confuses people when we say Jesus is God and He’s the Son of God. He is God, but He’s the Son of the Father, who we often refer to as just God.

So He is God the Son, and He is with God the Father. That’s how He can be God and be with God. Am I over-explaining this?

Or am I still under-explaining this? If you’re still saying, I don’t get it and I want to. Not you’re saying, I don’t get it and I’m going to use it as an objection.

You just don’t want to get it. But if you’re saying, I don’t get it and I want to, come talk to me afterwards and I’ll confuse you even more, okay? I’ll draw pictures.

We’ll break out puppets or something. I don’t know. We’ll try to make it work.

I’ll be glad to try to explain it to you in my still limited understanding. But He can be God and be with God because we’re talking about the Son. and the Father here.

But this tells us that in spite of what some people believe and what some people maintain, Jesus is not a mere man. He’s not just some created being. He is God and He always has been.

And the word was here, it says was God. It indicates the same thing that’s indicated through all of this, that it’s an ongoing thing. Jesus didn’t suddenly become God.

He always has been. And by the way, this is important to understand. This is so important because if Jesus is less than God, then He was not the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.

And there are groups that take, I want to say it’s called the state of theology. That may not be the exact title. But there’s a survey, and I believe it’s taken yearly by Lifeway and Ligonier Ministries or the Barna Group, two of those three.

I can’t remember which ones. But they do surveys of people in evangelical churches all across America, supposedly Bible-believing, gospel-centered churches all throughout America, and they ask them questions and people give their answers and they say, this is how many people are. .

. this is how well American evangelical Christians understand the Bible. The one that is way out there that somebody even wrote an article that says most American Christians are heretics, a majority of evangelicals agreed with the statement that said Jesus is the greatest of all created beings.

Now, my hope is that people read that and they got to greatest and thought, oh yeah, I agree, and didn’t read the rest because we tend to do that, right? Oh, I know where this is going. He’s great.

Jesus is the greatest of all beings. Jesus was not created, though. If He was created, He’s not God.

And if He’s not God, He was not the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. So that’s why it’s so vital. That’s why this matters so much. Every little piece of what John is trying to get us to understand here, that it was God Himself who showed up among us.

He was in the beginning with God. It says this in verse 2. And you may think, well, I’ve heard that somewhere before because He already said that in verse 1.

That’s right. He repeats Himself. Sometimes you’ll see this in Scripture where it’ll say this, it’ll say something in a verse and then the next verse or a few verses down, it’ll say exactly the same thing.

It does that for emphasis. Sometimes God wants us to understand that He didn’t inspire men who just wrote things down flippantly without thinking about it, they meant what they said. And so John here just kind of summarizes that Jesus has always been with God.

And then it says in verse 3, all things were made through Him. Jesus was working on the Father’s behalf to create all things. Now this doesn’t make Him less than the Father.

Don’t read too much into that, the idea of Him working on the Father’s behalf. Jesus said all throughout His earthly existence that He was doing things as the father led him to do them. It doesn’t mean that he’s a lesser God or half God.

Some people will teach that. I’m puzzled by how you can be half God because the Bible’s concept of God is all or nothing, right? You can’t be sort of God.

There’s all sorts of things you can’t sort of be. You can’t be sort of pregnant, right? You either are or not.

You can’t be sort of God. You either are or you aren’t. And Jesus was.

And yet Jesus here is working at the father’s behest, creating all things. and by the way with all due respect toward my jehovah’s witness friends it does not say that he created all other things it’s a subtle difference you’ll be told he created oh yes he’s creator but he created all other things no no no because other implies that he himself was created and again if he was created he’s not god thank you you’re paying attention I love it no no he didn’t create all other created all things. Everything that was created, everything that has a beginning, everything that came into existence at some point, owes its existence to Jesus Christ. He’s the creator of all things.

Well, who made God? Nobody made God because God didn’t need to be made. God didn’t have a beginning.

He just always has been. Jesus is the creator of all things. And John emphasizes this to make sure we understand that He is every bit as much God as the Father is.

Because He was there and intimately involved, He participated in creation every bit as much as the Father did. And Jesus carried out the plans of the Father. Now it doesn’t matter how close you are to God as a human being, there’s not one of us in here who can speak to nothing and make it be something.

Because we’re creatures ourselves. But Jesus Christ, as the uncreated creator of all things, had so much authority that He could speak to nothing. He could speak to something that.

. . Well, even the word something is problematic, but He could speak to something that didn’t exist and command it to exist, and nothing had to obey Him and become something.

That is incredible. That gives me chills to think about it, and that will give you a headache if you think about it too long. I can’t even get things that exist to obey me, right?

And Jesus Christ said, let there be light. And there was light. He spoke to nothing and made it something.

He’s responsible for all of that. And it says, and without him, nothing was made that was made. He can’t have been made himself.

Because if it was made, it was made because of him. If it was made, if it was created, it owes its existence to him. everything that was created, everything that has a beginning, everything that you and I see and touch and hear and smell, even we ourselves, we owe our existence and our continued existence to Jesus Christ. He’s responsible for all of it.

Now I know at that point the skeptic would say, well, we know where babies come from. Jesus created all of this in the beginning. And according to Genesis, he created all of creation with potential to reproduce after its kind.

And by the way, we can look and say, well, there’s people that built the church. Okay. Who created the trees that led to the trees that led to the trees that led to the trees for the wood for the pews?

Who is it that created human beings with a mind to be able to go to figure out how to work the wood and work the saws and create the saws? And who was it who gave the humans the hands and the ability? You trace it back far enough.

Jesus Christ is responsible for every bit of it. And by the way, the New Testament says that when He’s done with it, He’s going to roll this world up like a scroll. When He says the word, it’s all over.

And I don’t say that to cause you despair this morning, but to get you to understand the fact that we are still here, the fact that we are here this morning, and that everything we see has not ceased to exist, is testament to His sustaining of this world that we live in. Not only that, but sustaining each breath and each heartbeat that we take. Jesus Christ is ultimately responsible for the existence of the universe.

And so we see in these three verses, he’s outlining for us, it’s not just a baby that showed up in Bethlehem, it was God himself. John doesn’t present Jesus as this perpetual baby in the manger. He doesn’t treat Jesus like he’s just a man, which they still believed some people in John’s day.

There are churches today where you can hear a message about how Jesus was a really good man. Folks, John says he was more than that. He’s not just a symbol for whatever meaning you want to pour into him.

And I’m afraid that’s what we do sometimes with the baby in the manger. John presents Jesus as nothing less than the God of the entire universe. John tells us that in fact that baby who was born 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem created you and me.

Jesus is eternal. Jesus is almighty. Jesus is intimately connected to the Father. Jesus is responsible for the existence and the continued existence of everything around us.

Jesus Christ is God. And that is so important because when you look at Him as just the Christmas card picture, the little baby in the manger, all we have to do with the baby in the manger is cherish Him. But what we’re called to do with the man that baby grew up to be, and with the God he always has been, is to obey him.

And I think that’s part of the reason why people would want to leave him in the manger, is when you take him out of the manger, you’ve got to obey him. Jesus is not just a story to cherish, but a God to obey. And as we tell and retell and talk about and remember that story through this season of the year, We need to be reminded and we need to tell others that this child born in Bethlehem was, in fact, the God of the universe showing up in our midst as a man.

And the reason why he did that is because you and I had sinned and we had incurred the judgment of God that we deserve for that sin. We had rejected God, we had rebelled against Him, and we were separated from a holy God. Every one of us.

No matter how nice we are, we’ve sinned. Anything we think, say, do, or don’t do that displeases God is sin, and I’m guilty. And it’s for that reason that God the Son stepped out of heaven and became a man and dwelt among us, walked among us, put up with us, loved us, even knowing what we had done and what we were going to do.

And then with no sin of His own, nothing that He had to pay for, He took responsibility for my sins and yours. And He was nailed to the cross where He shed His blood and died in our place. The God of this universe sacrificed Himself so that we could be forgiven.

And because He did that, He offers us forgiveness. Not because we can be good enough to earn it or deserve it, but because He’s paid for it. We worship an incredible God.

and if you need that forgiveness this morning it is as simple as understanding that you’ve sinned against the amazing incredible God of the universe and that because of that you are separated from him and you are under judgment that you will one day be judged as as we all will for our sins if they’re not forgiven and you’re more than welcome to choose that but Jesus Christ made a way out and if you believe that he did if you believe that he died in your place and rose again then this morning you can talk to the Lord. There are no magic words. It doesn’t have to be a long, flowery prayer.

There’s nothing wrong with leading you in a prayer, but I think it’s much more personable if you just talk to the Lord. You can say something as simple as, Lord, forgive me. But talk to the Lord.

Acknowledge that you’ve sinned against Him. Acknowledge that Jesus came to save you and that you believe and ask Him for that forgiveness and you can have it.