The Word

This week was different. Last week I was stumped by the straw, so this week I had to tell the kids what I came up with about that. The boy who took the bag last week didn't show up yesterday so there is no new item to write about. But yesterday's sermon talked a little about the concept of the bag.

Yesterday we began a study of the Gospel of John. The Apostle wrote it in the late first century AD, with the primary purpose of proving that Jesus is the Son of God. At the very beginning of his Gospel he states, "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 came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." (John 1.1-3)

Right away he equates the Creator with the Savior. There was a belief known as Gnosticism which believed that Spirit was good and physical was evil. They said that a good God could not have made a world that had so much evil. They equated the God we see in the Old Testament with the Creator, and the God of the New Testament with Jesus and God the Father. John begins by saying "No, there is one God. He created everything as good. Sin entered the world, and so the creator has come to redeem it."

I read in a commentary Jesus did not change God's attitude towards us, Jesus showed us what God's attitude towards us has always been. God has always been loving towards us, Jesus simply gave us a window to see that.

Since Jesus, the Word, is the creator, and since through Him everything that has been made exists, and without Him nothing would exist, God exists at the core of everything. I'm not saying that God is in everything and that everything is God, that gets into Hinduism. What I am saying is that everything has it's origin in God. Since everything has it's origin in God, everything points back to God.

In our world we see a lot of messed up stuff. But all of it points to God. In the chaos, we see how evil sin is. It can take something God made so beautiful and pure, and twist it into something so evil and ugly. Sin can take the beauty of a woman and turn it into the lustful object of pornography. That's the state sin has brought the world to. But the Creator has had the final word.

The Creator is the only one who is able to redeem His creation. And so Jesus, the Word, the Creator, became flesh and dwelt among us. He gave His life to redeem His creation with His blood. Everything points to Him, and because of Him everything can be saved.

Peace be with you