The Creator
John 1:3-5

" People use the word “God” in many different ways. One frequently hears people use the word God in cursing, or in frustration. One may see it abused in movies and conversation.
The word God means many different things in different cultures. In Indian culture there are many Gods. There are three gods that stand out, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma is the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva is the destroyer. There gods assume various functions. There are many gods, there is a god for cholera, for rain, for baldness, and many more functions.
The three major gods I mentioned are often compared to the Trinity in the Bible. The persons of the Trinity are not separate gods nor do they have different functions.

In Japan there is the problem of talking about God creating the world because they have a story about two gods, male and female, who were commissioned by other gods to descend the rainbow and create the Japanese islands. The story knows nothing of the world outside of Japan. In Japan also, gods come and go. They are worshiped at various locations. There are over 2000 different gods worshiped in the many shrines of Japan.

. When I was in Taiwan I wrote a tract for a group of people about the Christian faith. One point I made was that concerning the reverence for ancestors. It seemed strange that there was a great emphasis on revering or worshiping the ancestors, when the Great Ancestor, the Great God of Creation, was ignored. That is still true today. There are celebrations and ceremonies concerning the ancestors of a family, but if a person becomes a Christian and rejects the ancestor worship, it becomes hard on that person by the other family members.

This is New Year’s Day and there is no better place to begin the year than with our ideas about God. In the Gospel of John some ideas are set forth that make the creation story more specific then the Old Testament.

I. Jesus Christ is the Creator of all things V. 3

This unusual statement has more meaning to us if we think about the ways in which people viewed the world. The immediate audience was a group of people known as Gnostics who believed that the world was not made by God. God was described as pure spirit and it was not possible to think of Him as carrying out the work of creation. So he put out from himself a series of emanations or influences that went further and further from Him. After a while one of these emanations did not know God and became hostile to Him, and it was that being which created the world. They identified the creator God with the Old Testament and this God was different from the God of the New Testament. Because of this matter was considered evil. Moreover, it was there impossible to think about God taking human flesh and dwelling among us in the birth of Jesus, the Messiah.

The Gospel of John rejects this artificial division. Rather, God is one, and it is the Trinitarian view of God involved in which Jesus, the Son of God becomes incarnate, and He was also the creator of the universe. This has the following implications.

A. Christian faith believes in creation ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. Once there was only God, and he chose to create. Creation is an act of love. The world did not begin as an evil thing. Matter is not evil in itself. It is created by God.
It is interesting that much of Greek thought was influenced by Aristotle who believed that the world was eternal, (in contrast to the Gnostics who were influenced by Plato). It existed forever, and there was no beginning point. There is logic in this that something must be eternal, unless, something comes from nothing, and we do not have any examples of that. But what is eternal? Is it God or the world?
Now, in terms of modern physics and astronomy, the view of science is that there was a big bang and a beginning point in the universe. It is difficult to be an atheist in today’s physics since some explanation of the Big Bang has to have a cause.

B. Christian faith has always believed that this is God’s world. The Gnostics tried to put the blame for the evil of the world on their “creator.” Christian faith believes that this was wrong and the problem in the world is man’s sin, not matter. God has created a marvelous world for us to live in and humans have sinned against God, against one another, and against his creation.

C. Humans are the peak of the Creative act of God. God created male and female as companions together. This is an act of love on God’s part. We are to love Him and to love one another. When families love one another and care for one another in love, there is a sense of oneness, a sense of community, and I believe that this reflects on the oneness of God and the sense of community as expressed in the Trinity.

D. We have been made the caretakers of God’s world. However, we have not been doing a good job of taking care of it. Our rivers have become a means of taking away pollution.
Our lakes have become polluted and unfit for use either as water sources or recreation. At times beaches are closed because of the sewage. I used to go to family reunions near Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I was born. There was a favorite spot that we used to enjoy. Grass Hopper Creek was a clear flowing stream in which one could drive thru it. The road ran thru it. We used to go there at the reunion and often somebody would be thrown into the water in fun. One time I was wading in the water and enjoying it. I looked down stream and someone had thrown in a dead hog and the carcass was in the water. It was not washed away, and it spoiled a wonderful time of enjoying clear spring water. We are to be caretakers of the world and of one another’s welfare.

I Jesus Christ is the source of all life 4.

In a great piece of music the composer often begins by stating a theme which is going to be elaborated in the course of the work. As the piece is played these themes come up again and again. This is what the Gospel does. There are two basic words, Light and Life that occur again and against in the gospel.

The gospel begins with life and ends with life. The concluding verses are that the Gospel was written so that one might “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.” (20:3) The word life is continually on the lips of Jesus. It is his regret that man will not come to him that they might have life.(5:40). He declared that He came that men might have life and that they might have it more abundantly. (10:10) He declared that he gives men life and that they will never perish because no one can snatch them out of his hand, (10:28). He declared that He is the way, the truth and the life. (14:6)

What is life? It is the opposite of destruction, condemnation, and death. God sent his Son that the man who believes should not perish but have everlasting life. (3:16) The person who hears and believes has eternal life and will not come into judgement. (5:24)
This life that is important is described as eternal life. Eternal life is not simply life that lasts forever. A life which lasted forever could be a terrible curse. Often people long for release from this life and its sufferings. Eternal life is a quality of life. The words eternal life are used to describe God’s own quality of life. Eternal life is to share God’s life. The Bible declares that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and we are without hope. But because of Christ and our faith in Him we have hope of sharing the glory of God (Rom.5:3).
Eternal life is life which knows something of the serenity and power of life in God. When Jesus came offering people eternal life he was inviting them to enter into the very life of God who loved by creating them.

How do we have this life? We enter into this life by believing in Jesus Christ. The word “ believe” occurs in the Gospel no fewer than 70 times. “He who believes in the Son has eternal life.” Believing means more than accepting a fact as true. I believe that Napoleon lived once in France, but it does not make a difference in my life. What is involved in the word “believe” is to commit oneself, or entrust oneself to Jesus. John 2:20 gives us an example of this. It says, “Jesus did not trust himself to them because He knew them all.”
Marriage commitment gives some context to the idea of trust, or believing. I believed in a woman enough to marry her and entrust myself to her. I trust my wife with our money, our food, our health, our welfare, and our home. As far as it is possible my life is entrusted to her.

This is the kind of commitment involved in the word–believe. Entrusting your life to Jesus means that you give Him everything you are and have. Not only do you trust him for all that you have, you also trust him thru trials, problems, and crises of life.
There is a verse of a great hymn that sums up some of these thoughts. “ O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee, I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller, be.”

III. Jesus Christ is the source of light. 4-5

The second great word of the Gospel is light. Light appears no less than 21 times in the Gospel. Jesus is the light of man. The function of John the Baptist was to point men to that light which was in Christ. Twice Jesus calls himself the Light of the world (8:12;9:5) This light can be in men (11:10). They can become children of light (12:36) I have come, said Jesus as “light into the world. (12:46) There are three areas of application

A. The light that Jesus brings is the light which puts chaos to flight. In the creation story the Spirit of God moved upon the dark formless chaos and God said, “Let there be light”
The newly created light of God routed the empty chaos into which He came. In the Gospel Jesus is the light which shines in darkness. He is the one who can save a life from becoming chaos. Left to ourselves we are the mercy of our passions, our fears, our desires.

B. The light which Jesus brings into our lives is a revealing light. “This is how the judgment works: the light has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil. Those who do evil things hate the light and will not come to the light, because they do not want their evil deeds to be shown up.” John 3:19-20. The light that Jesus brings shows things as they are. It strips away the disguises and concealments. It shows them in their true character and their true values. We are inclined to look at ourselves and think we are good, but in the Light of God our evil is exposed.
Two examples may help to contrast this. Not long ago Elaine wanted me to help wash the windows. They are on the south side of the house. So in the afternoon we cleaned the windows. They looked so good and clean. However, the next morning when the Sun came up, and shown in the house from the East, we could see the smearing and the patterns of our cleaning the day before. They looked terrible.
The second example reflects the same. One evening I cleaned up the kitchen cabinet and it look really good. The next morning when the Sun came through the window I could see little pieces of food, lint, and crumbs that I had missed. The Sun exposed my sloppy job of the night before.
So it is with humans. We think we are good, and God ought to be pleased with us, and when we have his Light shining upon us, our sins are exposed, and we stand condemned.

The Light which Jesus brings us a guiding light. “If a man does not possess the light he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going. (12:36) I have come into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness.”12:46)
There are a number of people in the Gospel stories coming to Jesus asking, “what shall I do?’ When Jesus comes into a life the time of groping is ended, the time of doubt and uncertainty is gone. The path that was dark becomes light.

Several years ago we took a vacation on the Mississippi River, renting a house boat and going up the river. At night we put into the shore, with our front run into the sandbar, and anchors holding the back of the boat perpendicular to the shore. We sat out in the darkness on top of the deck and watched the barges come and go up and down the river. They had a powerful searching light that swept from one side of the river to the other, from one buoy to the other and they made their journey in the middle of the night, in darkness. Their light was the source of their safety, their advance, and staying in the middle of the channel. Jesus Christ is the light of man who keeps them in the right channel from going aground and ruining themselves.

Concl.:

Light is bound up with life. Without light we would not have life. What we eat is produced by light. Even the juicy steak is indirectly the product of light. Light brings warmth to our bodies. All this is true for physical life. Jesus is the Light of the world and He has come to give us Spiritual Life, life everlasting in the presence of God.

Have you made the commitment of your life to the source of your life. There is the second verse of the hymn, “O light, that lightest all my way, I yield my flickering torch to thee, my heart restores its borrowed rays, that in thy sunshine’s blaze its days may brighter, fairer, be.
Why walk around with a flashlight when you can have the Son’s Sun? We are here to help your in your journey to find God.