Jesus, The Creator, Is With Us Series

Sermon Preached by Rev. Larry C. Brincefield at Belleview Church of the Nazarene on November 28, 2004

Title: Advent 1: Jesus the Creator With Us.

Text: John 1:1-14

Introduction

1. God is sitting in heaven when a scientist prays to Him and says, "God, we don’t need you anymore….

Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing

in other words, we can now do what You did in the beginning."…

"Oh, is that so? Tell Me more..." God asked.

"Well," says the scientist, "we can take dirt and form it into the likeness of You and breathe life into it, thus creating man."

"Well, that’s very interesting...show Me."

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to mold the soil into the shape of a man.

"No, no, no..." interrupts God, "Get your own dirt.

2. That’s the difference between God and man isn’t it?

People can be very creative…

They can take wood, paint, pen, or brush…

And create some of the most beautiful masterpieces…

But in the end,…

When you boil everything down to the most basic level…

We still have to start with God’s dirt…

God’s trees…

God’s plants…

God’s water…

When God started…there was nothing…

The earth was formless and empty…

And then from the emptiness…

God created everything in all creation.

3. This Christmas Season…

I would like for us to look at it from a slightly different angle…

Normally, ministers will focus of different aspects of the Christmas story…

Which is certainly a valuable thing…

Scripture is always new…

Always refreshing…

It seems that no matter how many times you read and re-read different passages of Scripture…

The Holy Spirit seems to provide new light and fresh insight…

Even in the Christmas story…

But, as valuable as that may be…

I’d like to look at Jesus in a little different way this year.

4. One of my favorite names for Jesus is Emmanuel.

Which means “God with us”…

Typically at Christmas time we think of Jesus…

Coming to earth in the form of a little Baby…

And becoming God with us…

But Jesus is with us in not only as a little Baby at Christmas time…

But Jesus is with us in many different ways…

And different aspects…

And it is these different ways that Jesus is with us that I would like to look at for these 4 Sundays of Advent.

Today, I would like for us to look at Jesus…The Creator with us.

5. When we want to study and learn more about Jesus…

Obviously as some point, we will turn to the 4 Gospel writers…

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

This morning, I would like for us to turn to John’s Gospel…

Read Text: John 1:1-14

Body

1. First of all, John tells us that In the beginning was the Word

A. When the 4 Gospel writers wrote…

They each had a different readership in mind…

And each one approached the story of Jesus in a different way…

1) Matthew was writing with the Jews in mind…

He started with the genealogy of Jesus…

from the time of Abraham forward…

2) Mark wrote for more of a Roman readership…

They were more concerned with what people did…

Instead of their genealogy…

So Mark didn’t even go there…

He started at the beginning of Christ’s adult ministry…

Many times, we don’t even turn to Mark to study the Christmas story…

3) Luke wrote with Gentiles in mind…

Luke was a Gentile himself…

And a physician…

Luke begins his Gospel narrative telling about his methods of research…

And in Chapter 3, Luke undertakes the ambitious undertaking of tracing the line of Jesus all the way back to Adam…

4) John, however, wrote for a primarily Greek readership…

Greeks were interested in education and philosophy…

They were great thinkers…

And so John takes the story of Jesus back…

Way back before His earthly ministry…like Mark did…

Way back before His genealogy to Abraham…like Matthew did…

Way back before His genealogy to Adam…like Luke did…

John reaches all the way back into eternity…

And tells us, “in the beginning was the Word”.

John’s introduction is reminiscent of the beginning of Genesis…”In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”…1

B. John’s writing and referring to Jesus as “the Word” is very interesting…

When we think of words…

Perhaps we think of written words…

We play word games with paper and pencil…

Unless you are a very confident wordsmith…

And use a pen!

But for people in Bible times…

When they thought of words…

They thought of the spoken word…

Which brings to mind another allegory to the Genesis story of creation…

When we read the story of creation…

We are quick to notice that God SPOKE the world into existence…