“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
That is the first sentence of the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis was
written with two great objectives in mind. Moses speaks about two things more
than anything else. He speaks about God and he speaks about God’s people. God
created Man. Man feel into sin. God called him out of darkness into the light.
Some received that light; some did not. Abel believed. Cain did not. Noah
believed. The rest of the world did not. Abraham believed. The rest of the
world only fell deeper and deeper into darkness. God blessed Abraham and his
descendants. He was their God. They were his people. He was present among them
and blessed them and fought for them. He made a mighty nation of them and they
lived for hundreds and hundreds of years in the land that he had promised to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” is
the first sentence of the book of Genesis. “In the beginning was the Word,” is
the first sentence of the Gospel of John. “The Word was with God, and the Word
was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him everything was made, and
without him not one thing was made that has been made.” The apostle John is
obviously referring to the first book of the bible by using the same words. He
also shows us something that we might not otherwise see as easily. He says that
the Word was with God—referring to the Son of God. It was through the Word that
God created. Now how did God create? He spoke. He used words. He said, “Let
there be light,” and there was light. The Trinity is there already in the first
verses of Genesis. God, as in God the Father, was there. The Word, as in the
Son, was there. The Holy Spirit was also there, for Moses says, “and the Spirit
hovered over the face of the waters.” The triune God created all things, and
without the Trinity nothing was made. There is one God, one Creator. He has
universal significance.
The apostle John has something to say about this God as it
has been shown to him in Jesus Christ. That is why he is writing this Gospel.
What is of great importance to God is his relationship with Man. Remember that
I said Moses had two objectives in Genesis. He wanted to speak about God and he
wanted to speak about God’s people. The same is true here with John in his
Gospel. He says that John the Baptist came, telling people about the Word, the
Light, that has come into the world in Jesus, born of Mary, but these people
who were descendants of the people of God did not receive him. “But,” John
says, “to all who did receive him, to those who believe in his name, he gave
the right to become children of God. They were born, not of blood, or of the
desire of the flesh, or of a husband’s will, but born of God.”
Here we are introduced to a peculiar nation, a peculiar
tribe, a peculiar family. The families that we know of are ones that are
produced through the desire of the flesh and the will of a husband. Father and
mother come together and children are born. One generation follows another, and
if God so wills it, they might increase greatly in number.
This is what God says to Abraham, as you might remember. He
says, “Look at the stars. Try to number them. That is how many descendants you
will have.” A side note here: even with all our technology, our scientists
still have not been able to number all the stars. The farther into space they
look, the more stars they see. And God directs Abraham to the sand of the
seashore. All those countless grains of sand—that’s how many descendants you
will have.
But just as the apostle John has shown us some things that
we might not otherwise see with the opening words of Genesis—namely, that the
Trinity was the God who created the earth—so also he might be filling us in on
something here too. The true descendants of Abraham, the true children of God,
are not those of the flesh. It’s not a matter of genetics or family lineage.
It’s a matter of faith, which is given according to the will of God.
The history of the Old Testament confirms this. To be sure,
the vast majority of believers were blood descendants of Abraham, but not all
of them. There was always a trickle of Gentiles, a trickle of people from other
nations, who also came to faith. Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho, came to
faith. In fact, she is in the family line from which Jesus was born. At the
time of Solomon, the queen Sheba came from Africa to visit him. When she went
back, it appears that there was a congregation that began to call on the name
of the Lord in what is today Ethiopia.
There are other examples we could mention too. But this is
enough to show that John is teaching us what it means to be a child of God. It
has always been a matter of faith in the God who promises salvation. Adam and
Eve believed that they were reconciled to God, though they were sinners, by
what God had said. Abel believed. Cain did not. Abel was a child of God. Cain
remained a child of the devil, which we all are by nature, since the fall into
sin. The religion of Christianity was not invented at the time of Jesus. The
God who was there at the beginning is the same God that is now and ever shall
be. The way that people were children of God then, namely, by faith, is the
same way that people are children of God now.
So did nothing change with Jesus? Did everything just carry
on like it always had? No, as the apostle John himself tells us. With Jesus
something tremendous happens. The Word which was in the beginning and was God,
has been made Man. “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” The promise
made in the Garden of Eden was brought to a fulfillment. Because God loved each
one of us individually and every individual who has ever lived, he wished to
save us from our slavery to the serpent which we had brought upon ourselves. He
sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem us who were guilty
according to that Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. Though the
serpent sunk his fangs into the heel of Jesus on the cross so that he died, the
serpent himself was undone by that action.
In Jesus there is forgiveness of sins and reconciliation
with God. Now, by faith, we may call upon God as our dear Father. We may walk
with him and talk with him like Adam and Eve did before they sinned. We are
urged to do just that, having a good conscience, by the blood of Jesus that
purifies us from our sins. Because we still have our sinful flesh, however,
this is a great struggle to believe and do. None of us do it as we would like
to be able to do it. But this will change one day too. We will not always walk
by faith. One day we will walk by sight and our sinful flesh will be purified
through the resurrection from the dead. Then we will know fully the splendor of
being a child of God.
In Jesus the fullness of God’s will toward us is revealed.
In Jesus the fullness of God’s salvation is worked out by Jesus’s death and
resurrection. And so, certainly, things do not just carry on like they always
have with the coming of the Son of God into the flesh. And yet, on the other
hand, there is a carrying on of things as they always have been. God blessed
the people of the Old Testament with his Word. They believed it. Through that
faith they were justified and children of God. Now that Word of God has come to
you. You are hearing it, are you not? You believe that Jesus is the Savior who
was born for you, do you not? Then you are children of God. God has chosen you
from before the foundation of the world to know and love Jesus and to live
together with him forever. Just as God loved and protected Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, and all the people of God that we read about in the Bible, so also he
loves and will protect you.
And so it is a great blessing that God has brought it about
that you should hear his promises. God keeps his promises, for he is not a liar
like us. And he dwells among us, he tabernacles among us, as the apostle John
says. Today we will know that in a special way. In order that we may believe
his promises more firmly he gives us the very body and blood that was
sacrificed on the cross for our redemption to eat and to drink. I can’t imagine
a more forceful way for God to say to you that you are redeemed from all your
sin. You are a child of God. God loves you.
Let us, therefore, this Christmas morning, receive this
pledge and seal of our salvation with thanksgiving to our God for making us his
children.
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