See Christ in ALL Creation

Summary

Explore the essence of new beginnings through Christ’s teachings. Discover how to see God in all creation and begin your spiritual journey today.

Transcript

Good morning, everybody. Again, officially, I guess, from up here, my name is Jeremy. I'm one of the pastors here at Journey, and it's good to be with you, and happy last Sunday of Christmas, and happy beginning of 2026.

Happy New Year. It's all good. How many here have already broken their New Year's resolutions? You can raise your hand if you'd like. I'll offer forgiveness for you. Mine, you can hold me accountable, as my New Year's resolution is to eat more vegetables. I don't eat enough vegetables, so anytime you see me, you can ask me, how is the vegetable eating going, and I will tell you, not well, I'm sure, but my goal is to eat more vegetables.

It really is, so I can be strong like Popeye. But this year, we're starting off with the gospel message, the last message of the Christmas season, but the first of the year is really fitting. It's John 1, the very beginning of a gospel, the very beginning of a story that we get to start off, and talk about all this good stuff that Jesus is, that God is, in our world. John, as a personal side, John is my favorite gospel of all the gospels. He's the most unique of all the four of the gospels. He is his own thing, and that's not really why I like him. I think the way he writes is, it's familiar to me, and it's one of the gospels that when you are first starting as a Christian, they will tell you to read.

John's a really good gospel to understand the character of Jesus. The other three gospels will give you a lineage, and kind of tell you how he progresses through his life, but John is just kind of like, here is Jesus, and here is what he did, and here is why he is who he is. I mean, in fact, the whole reason John is written is, this is really nice. Usually, people write in parables, or they don't tell you the reason for the book, and scholars have to spend all this time figuring out why do they write this stuff, but John does us a favor. In the 21st chapter, so the end of the book, he goes to the end first, but he says, this is his validity. He says, this is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. So, I'm a disciple.

I'm running these things. This is how you know that what is written is true, but the reason he writes it comes back in chapter 20. He says, but these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name. That's the whole purpose of this gospel. It's all leading to this point, so that you would believe that Jesus is who Jesus says he is, and all the claims that people make are true, that he is the Son of God, and through him, we have life everlasting, and so that's how he ends it. So, we get back to the beginning. Good storytelling, and he starts right at the beginning, and he doesn't give a lineage, which may be why I like this gospel a lot, too, is he doesn't take any time, unlike I'm doing right now, of introduction, but he doesn't waste any time to get right into Jesus and who he is, because he starts off right as it mimics in the very first book of the Bible.

You know, Genesis 1-1 says, in the beginning, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, in the beginning. John 1-1, in the beginning, in the beginning, it's very important, in the beginning, in the beginning, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And so, sure, you know, we get this beautiful start, in the beginning, and all this creation happens, so from the beginning of Genesis to Jesus walking the earth, there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens in between there, right, and that's all very important stuff. The Old Testament happens, it's all very important, and we learn from it, and we need to know it, and we need to hear it, because there are a lot of lessons of who God is, and a lot of teachings of who God is that we need to understand, but we're, you know, we're not interested in that in this exact moment. In the beginning, God created, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. And so, between Jesus being born, the Christmas celebration that we just celebrated, him coming into this world, there's a lot of stuff that happens before he starts his ministry, but we're not really interested in that, because the story picks up with John the Baptist proclaiming that Jesus is coming, the light of the world is coming. So, again, John is not interested in necessarily this big, grand storytelling.

He's interested in who God is, who Jesus is, and he's going to tell us about it. So, if you'll allow me, I'm going to try to stretch a little bit, because this particular gospel, especially this passage we're reading, has shaped my relationship with the world around me, and with God, probably more so than any other scripture has shaped me in probably the past five, six, maybe even a decade, maybe my whole life, this passage of scripture, because it's simple, but it's so much more than, I think, what we read on the page. And maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just coming into something new, and you all know this, but you can stick along with me as we go through it together. And the first question you get to know is, what makes a good beginning? What makes a good beginning of a story, of a journey? Is it knowing the way forward?

Like, I need to know I need to go this way. That's a good beginning. Is a good beginning just taking the first steps? Is it knowing what the ultimate goal is? My beginnings, let's talk about traveling. When I travel, I know that I make my wife in particular stressful, because I don't plan. My belief in a good beginning is just starting, you know? Like, I'm just going to go.

I know the end goal, and I'm going to just go. I'm just going to go do it, and I'm going to figure it out along the way. But the journey is the fun part, the mystery, the excitement, all that. You know, some people would say stress, the stress of traveling. I like it. I like to go, especially if I'm by myself. A good beginning is just starting.

And if I don't just start, I can overthink things so much. I can, like, try to plan for the perfect thing. I can try to, like, look for the right materials. I can spend all this time planning and never actually start. And so for me, a good beginning is just starting. In college, I did this thing called the Mountain Man Memorial March. It's in Tennessee.

It's in the mountains. And it's a marathon, walking or running, if you are hardcore. And you usually wear, like, an army pack, and it's for the memory of people who have died in the military. And you go, and you walk these mountains. And I trained kind of. Not very well, though, because I got to mile 22, and I had to stop. I was worn out.

My legs literally did not work anymore. I just kind of was, like, walking like a stick figure. At the halfway point, the person said to me, hey, you're halfway done. It's only downhill from here. But we were on the side of a mountain, and the next mile was actually straight uphill. So I was not trained well. My beginning, I stepped off that Mountain Man Memorial March 26 miles, hopefully.

I started, and it was fun until it wasn't. And so when I was thinking about what makes a good beginning, I thought that, like, you know, the beginnings are often influenced by your past, by a past. When you start something, you are actually influenced by a whole bunch of stuff that comes before you. Mountain Man Memorial March, I did not train. I started. I had the date. And I trained a little bit, but not well enough.

But I started. And so my beginning was strong. My ending was not good. Think about when you start school, any level, you know, how you prepare for school or how you're prepared for school will influence the way how you, typically how you do in school. You know, we have this thing that was introduced a few years ago, the third grade reading guarantee and this whole thing. But a lot of studies show that if you can read well by third grade, the rest of your life in school will be pretty easy. You'll have a lot of success.

That's the measure they use. So they want you to begin well. Even more so, if you begin kindergarten being able to read and write, you're going to have a very easy time getting into school and continuing on understanding the concepts. So your past can influence that. Beginning your parenthood. If you are a parent, you know that if you have a difficult upbringing, bad parents, your past, you might think you're going to do better until you actually have a kid in your life. And then you realize you start to sound and act like your parents because that's what influenced your beginning.

And so if you don't prepare for your beginning, beginnings can be really, really rough. Your past influences a beginning. So what makes a good beginning? A lot of things. And so how we begin then, how we start something has a major impact on how the journey before us unfolds. So I just started painting watercolor the past probably month or so.

Why? I don't know. I don't know why. I was captivated by how it works. It was relatively cheap to get into. I just wanted to start painting and this happens.

Maybe it's part of my ADHD. This will be a hobby that I drop in probably a year and then pick back up in five years. But I am having a lot of fun water painting. But here's what, I got the paint. I got the water. That's easy. Got the paint brushes.

I got the paper. And I didn't know how to start. If you've ever had watercolor, you take a paint brush, you try to paint, try to pick up the paint. Nothing happens because it's just a block of paint. And so I figured, let's just add water. So my first two paintings, I just splashed a whole bunch of water on it and hoped for the best. I just started.

And that was okay for the first couple. But then I realized quickly how much I did not know. I did not know just the simple things. And when you start online, YouTube is beautiful. You can find all kinds of stuff on YouTube. But all the beginning tutorials I found, most of them didn't actually show you how to start using the paint. They were like, follow this beginning tutorial with me, or here's all the supplies you need to buy, the brushes, the paint, all this stuff.

You need two cups of water. But they never showed how do you actually start painting? So I finally found that. And it's been amazing ever since. And I try to be like a little water painting elf and paint after the family goes to bed and put my little artwork up so they can see it when they wake up and tell me how proud they are of me. But I had to start poorly, which then influenced my journey ahead of time.

My journey could have quickly come to an end if I didn't understand the concepts of this whole thing. And so when the world is created, we have this gap between in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, to Jesus coming back. And this whole time, we started well. God started us well, perfect. And then we messed up. We had this whole gap where we didn't know what we were doing. Even though we had a bunch of tutorials, we had the whole Old Testament, we had the Pentateuch, we had all the stuff that was teaching us how to do things, but we didn't understand, I don't think, the concepts.

I think we're kind of there sometimes still to this day. We have the whole Bible, but we don't always understand the concepts. We read it, we know the stories, we know the people, but we don't always understand what was supposed to happen, how you're supposed to exist in this world. And if you don't understand how it all works, it can be very difficult to do what you want to do or to exist how you're supposed to exist. I used to drive a stick shift car. I can drive a stick shift. And my mom used to try to teach me how to drive a stick shift in this little old Saturn car in the parking lot of a Lion food store in Fremont, Ohio.

And we would sit there and she would try to tell me how to do stuff. Just lift your foot up kind of gently, you know, feel the car going forward and put the gas a little bit. And it just, she said all the right things. And when I sat down in my driving school and I opened a book up and it told me how a clutch works and how a transmission works. And I understood the concepts of how it's all supposed to fit together. The next day I went out, or the next time I went out to drive, I could drive a stick shift. That's not a discredit to my mom, how she taught, but it was how I could understand everything to be able to move the car forward.

And so we have all this stuff in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. We got all these laws, Leviticus, you know, all the numbers, how to build stuff and all this, all these things here at the beginning. And Jesus still has to come back. God still has to enter into this world through Jesus. And we get here in John 1. And John, for whatever reason, feels like he has to write down who Jesus is and why he's important and to back up the claims that he is Christ. And so he starts here, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. That's beautiful. That is good stuff right there, but what does it mean?

What does that even mean? Because he repeats himself a lot in here. What does that mean? What does it mean that the word's with God and that's the light and all that? What does that mean? You know, you'll hear most people when they talk about the beginning of John, this is a good defense of the Trinity, the divine nature of who Jesus is. Because a lot of people will say that Jesus was only just God walking around in a meat suit or he was just Jesus and then had the divineness ripped out of him.

But this is evidence that Jesus Christ wasn't made. Christ wasn't made. He wasn't born. He wasn't created. He was always there forever and ever before us and will be forever and ever after us. So this is a very good scripture for those people who aren't Trinitarians. You can use this scripture right here.

In the beginning was God. So at least that's a defense. Or sorry, in the beginning was the word, Jesus, Logos Christ. So that's good. But is that all this is? I don't think so. You know, then we get into this next part, which is that Jesus is the light of the world.

We say this a lot. Jesus is the light of the world. That's good. That's good theology. Darkness is going to overcome the world, but nothing can exist with the light around it. And so we should be the light of the world and carry it into the darkness. And people will know that that is good.

Bad things can exist in the dark. Good. This is very good scripture. But is that all that it is too? I don't think so. It's much bigger than that. This is so much more than just Jesus is God and Jesus is the light of the world.

Because it says, through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. This is all of creation. This is the verse that has, I think, radically changed the way I view this world. And as I reflect on this today and in the past when I started studying this is like this is a I guess I'll read what I wrote. If everything was created through Christ, then shouldn't I be looking for Christ in all things and in all people and in all of creation? This is a pretty radical idea if you allow it to be and it will change how you interact in the world and with the world around you.

Because this is all of creation, all of creation, all of creation is not just the good Nazarene Christians of East Dallas. It's not just the good Nazarenes of the whole world. It's not just the Christian church. It is all of creation.

It's not just people. It is the earth. It is the plants, the animals, the water, the skies, the mountains, the valleys, the volcanoes, everything. Everything that has came into being is through Christ. Nothing was made that has been made. That is a radical idea to live into. I think it's important to be reminded and to sit with that when Genesis 1, when God made the world, it was good.

When God made people, it was very good. It was so good that God was able to rest, it says. Made the world in six days. That's the story we're reading here. God created, created, created. Good, good, good, good, very good. And just appreciate what he has made.

So much so, you know, we can talk about creation and a lot of times we will even skip over the time that God spent with people, with Adam and Eve and all of creation walking in the garden. I mean, there's a time that God was appreciating his creation by being with his creation. And so I think most of us, most of you will know what it's like to sit in front of something that's formless or not together and to create something and to be done with it and sit back and admire what you've done. I hope that if you haven't experienced that, I hope you do, but it's a very proud and accomplished feeling. People who knit, you know, you start with a pile of yarn and a week later you got something. You've put something, that's magic to me, knitting and crocheting. But it's formless and it turns into something that can be used and appreciated.

Painting, you start with a blank canvas and some colors and you just, you paint and you create something. Constructing, if you have been in construction, you know what it's like to build something or to, yesterday I put up a new thermostat in our house and that was, it took a lot of brain power for me because it's not something I'm used to doing, but when the heat kicked on for the first time after I got it put up, I was so proud of myself that I did that. I probably had more stuff there than I needed because it looked like a hot mess, but I did that. You know, I created something, Lego. My kids are into Lego, making music. You know, that is just an organization of sound. You have nothing and then you put something together and you've made something.

If you've ever been a parent or had been around people, there's nothing and then one day you're holding this little bundle of life, creation. You can see right there with you. I mean, even paper airplanes. You start with a piece of paper, you can sit back and you can appreciate out of nothing, I mean, as much as we can understand it, out of nothing, we've created something. So imagine how devastating it is when that perfect creation you've made is destroyed. If you have siblings, you know what that's like. You know, your sibling comes by and says, that's a cool paper airplane and throws it away, you know?

Or that's a cool Lego set and kicks it or that's a cool puzzle and they push it off the table.

This is what happens so quickly after God creates the perfect creation of the world. It's beautiful, he appreciates it and then it gets messed up. But even though you look down at this destroyed project, this destroyed puzzle or Lego, whatever you've created, even though you look down at it and it looks miserable because it's not together, it's not vaporized. There are still remnants of that, the creation that you can see and look at and you can know that it's still showing and you can start to appreciate little parts of it. And so just because humans jacked up creation and jacked up the world with God, doesn't mean that the imprints of God on creation has disappeared. Just because the world is broken and people are far away from God, does not mean that God has disappeared from creation. All things that have been created, all things, all people have been created through Christ.

We have the imprints of Christ on our lives. In our theological words, we use something called pervading grace, the grace that goes ahead, the Holy Spirit exists everywhere all the time, we still have remnants of God, we can understand the goodness of God. We can't get there, we can't be fully in relationship with God because we don't have that power on our own, but we're not totally cut off and depraved and totally evil people, because God's still created and we still are a creation of God. One of the best parts of God is that darkness cannot overcome God, even though some may have tried their very darndest. And so in this story, John the Baptist is sent ahead to prepare the way for Jesus, is to proclaim that the light is coming. John the Baptist is six months older than Jesus, he says, the person who's coming before me is above me and I'm not worthy of this tie of sandals, and he makes this proclamation. And so we've been talking about this in the past couple months, but how did those who knew scripture miss this so much?

John one, chapter one, we go a little bit further in verse 10. It says this, it says, he was in the world. So we're talking about the word, Christ. Christ was in the world and through the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. He came to what was his own, his own creation. What he made, he came to, and the things that were created did not recognize Jesus Christ.

And to his own are the people that he chose to be the ambassadors, the people of God who are supposed to be spreading the message to the ends of the earth. He came to them, they rejected him. Even though this whole Old Testament told exactly who Christ was, and who was coming, and what it looked like, and how you're supposed to exist in this world. Christ was in the world because creation was made through Christ.

So the question, do you know Christ? Do you know Christ? Do you see God in the sunsets, and the sunshines, and the sunrises, and the mountains, and in the valleys, and the grand cathedrals, and the little country churches? Do you see God in the innocence of newborns, or the frailty of those who are near death? Do you see God in cats and dogs, and the complexity of creation, the tiniest little insects? Those are really easy.

You probably could all say yes. We all have this feeling, we look at this beautiful sunset, oh, that's so beautiful, that's God, that's great. Newborn, oh, so cute, that's God. Do you see Christ in different church denominations? What about people in different cultures?

Do you see Christ in them? Do you see Christ in immigrants, both who have come here legally, or both who have come here illegally? Do you see Christ in them? Do you see the creation of God? Do you see the creation of Christ in your enemies?

If all things are made through Christ, and nothing came into existence without going through Christ, then even your enemies, who you despise, and you hate, and you cannot stand, even Christ created them. And if you can accept that, praying for your enemy becomes much easier. When you can pray that I hope to see, even if like, you know, we could say, I pray that they change their ways, that's a good prayer, that's a good, good, good, but you could say, God, please help me to see your creation in those who I despise. That's a radical prayer.

Even if your enemy is shrouded in darkness, and they're doing their best to snuff out the light of others, could you see the glimpse of light of Christ in them? God's creation is broken, which is why Jesus comes into this story. It's radically contrarian to look for, and hope for the light of Christ in those who relish the darkness, but I'm asking you to do just that. I'm not asking, I'm asking you to not participate in the brokenness of the world, but to be like Christ. In a world that was covered in darkness, that despised and rejected him, he still came into this world to bring hope, and mercy, and grace to the people, to his creation.

Pick it up in verse 12.

Yet, to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but born of God. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. And a little bit further in 16. Out of his fullness, we have received, we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one who has ever seen, no one has ever seen God, but the one and only son, who is himself God, and in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

God never was gone. God was never far away in the Old Testament. But here, Moses has brought the laws. Laws are good. But as Paul says, laws exist essentially to show us how far away from perfection we are. But it's not through the laws that we find our redemption. It's not through the laws, and sacrifices, and rituals that we find our salvation.

It is through the light of the world, which is Jesus, who came to show us what God, and who God is, in the midst of his broken world. There are many people in this world who will not know Christ because they choose to live in darkness. But it is my desperate plea to all of you that we do not look at this world, especially people, as anything less than a part of God's creation. That's my plea to you.

I'll go further. Maybe you need to start with yourself. It's my plea that you see yourself in the same exact way, that you are a creation of God.

Those of us who proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior have recognized that they must run towards the light. And that's one of the things we recognize as we've come to know who Jesus is, that the world is broken, we exist in the broken world, and there is a light that I cannot reach by myself. But we need to run towards it and turn towards him. We must run towards the light and not away from it. They know darkness, and they know how far away the light may feel. Sometimes it is very dark. But those who know who Jesus is know how far away that light might feel.

But when we finally turn towards it and call out to the light, call out to Jesus, Jesus welcomes you to the family. You are made new and recreated in Christ so that you can be a son and daughter, brother and sister, in the eternal salvation that is Jesus. You don't have to live in the darkness anymore. In fact, you get to be recreated and you get to live into the fullness of who God has called us to be and into the perfection of the world. The world's still dark sometimes, I get it. There's still enemies in the world, I get it. But we know that that's not the story.

That is not the world that we are supposed to live into. That is not how we are supposed to exist in the dark, but we are supposed to be the light and hope of the world, just as Jesus was the light and hope of the world when he came to this world. We, as followers of Christ, are the light and hope of those around us, not because of us and our own power, but because of the Holy Spirit that works through us that we have received because we have accepted the light of Jesus. And when that happens, when you say yes to Jesus, that's not the end. You haven't made it. That's not it. Your finish line is done.

That is just the beginning.

Creation was made once, and when we accept Jesus, we are made new again. That's a beautiful thing. We are born, reborn. It is up to us now to continue to allow the Holy Spirit to shine bright through us and to keep us away. I'm gonna change this. I said to keep us away from the dark, and I'm gonna change that to not succumb or allow the darkness to overcome us. Because there's gonna be times when people, family maybe, friends that you're going to exist in this world, your workplace maybe, that it feels dark and you are there by yourself.

And just as an aside, that's why it's important that we meet together as a body of believers so we can encourage one another and build each other up and make the light shine brighter together as a family. But you're gonna find yourself in these places, and so it is up to us to allow the Holy Spirit to work through us in those spots. It's not easy. It's not easy. But it's work, or it is work. It's one of the ways we continue to allow ourselves to continue on the path that we have started. in this world of following Jesus.