The Messiah’s Secret –  God at the Beginning and the End of all Things.

Reading John 1: 1 – 14.

Children’s spot. Kaleidoscope

The light from the star shone over the stable at Bethlehem, it’s light would shine inside the stable through the door or window, helping Joseph and Mary to see what was going on around them.

The Bible tells us that ‘God is Light’  and in Jesus we see God’s light . Light that makes us feel safe when we are in a dark place. Light that shows us the way in our lives.

I’ve been making this week some kaleidoscopes a toy in the shape of a tube that you look through to see different patterns of light made by pieces of coloured glass and mirrors. I’ve not used mirrors instead I’ve used clear plastic to reflect the light. The children present came and collected from me  a kaleidoscope and a pattern to colour.

At the point in the service were we say sorry to God for our sins, we focused on the cross. Reading from 1 John 1: 6 – 10

After the reading and hymn Jim focused on John 1: 9 with a Word Search Game.

Sermon

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

The Apostle John wrote in his gospel of what he saw, heard and experienced from Jesus. He began his gospel from his conclusion of who Jesus is, Jesus being the Word of God clothed in the flesh, confirming Jesus’ word that he and the Father God are one, the life and light of God in him, Jesus the second person of the Trinity.

John remembered what John the Baptist had said “Jesus the true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not.” John 1: 9, 10.

Jesus came into the world to enable us to receive a new pattern of living out our lives, to be enlightened about God, to have his values based on love. Love God and your neighbour as yourself.

Archbishop Justin Welby in his Christmas address said that the world’s values are in the wrong place, ’Economic, technological, and communication progress hasn’t resulted in economic justice,’ he called them the ‘economics of despair.’ He went on to say, “Uncertainty in the midst of much, but far from universal, prosperity is a sign of our trust being in the wrong things.” I understand him to mean: Globalisation has produced a material pattern whereby people trust in riches: the accumulation of wealth by the few, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

What produces universal prosperity comes from our knowing God and His values.

An anecdote from J John and Mark Stibbe’s Book, ‘A Bundle of Laughs’

“H G Wells after he had studied the history of the human race and had observed human life, he came to the conclusion; “Religion is the first thing and the last thing and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honour. But all these things fall into place and life falls into place only with God.” Materialism has its’ place, finding his place in God, he had found life. Jesus came into the world to enable us to receive God into our heart, for our lives to be transformed from knowing about God, to have a relationship with God.

Verses 11-13. “He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in His name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born not of blood nor the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.”   The Jewish people were born from human descent, whereas, Jesus his flesh coming from his mother Mary, but his life’s blood coming from his Father God, the Alpha and Omega without descendants. Jesus was born of God.

John confirms a Christian is born not from descendants who were Christians, but born of the will of God through faith in Jesus.

Paul writing to the Corinthian church wrote, “ The cross a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  1 Corinthians 1:23, 24.

Jesus’ own people the Hebrews in their worldly wisdom couldn’t understand the cross, they perhaps saw Jesus as being humiliated, at Calvary they shouted, “Let the King of Israel come down from the cross and we may see and believe.” Mark 15: 32.

Many were not enlightened by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, but those who were, John wrote, “But to all who received him, who believed in His name, he gave power to become children of God.”

It is the same today, the cross is still a stumbling block to many, and it speaks of sin, failure, suffering, and being ignored.

“But to all who receive him, and believe in His name, he gives power to become children of God.” Born of the will of God.

God’s saving love through faith in Jesus, Romans 10 : 8, 9. “But what does it say; the word is near you, on your lips and in your heart, that is the word of faith which we preach, because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

God has given us a pattern to follow, to walk by faith and not by sight,   sight being: human wisdom, logic, and science. One person I long to be enlightened to find God is Sir David Attenborough. He has spent all his adult life observing and studying wild life and yet he cannot see the creator of life, God.

Walking in faith in Jesus, trusting that God has the whole situation its’ beginning and end in view, because He is the Alpha and the Omega.

I learnt this from Mark’s  recent illness; God has the beginning and the end of all our situations, he sees the whole picture and  all the Lord asks from us is to trust that God will work things out, true to his word.

The third person of the Trinity the Holy Spirit will give assurance in our Spirit of the outcome, so therefore faith, hope and love grow in our inner being as we trust and rest in the light of His Word to us.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, may we have opportunity today to those who we meet, to give the light of Jesus’ words. By your grace may the deaf hear and the blind see and be enlightened, to come to know Jesus as their Saviour God. Amen

Bookmarkers were given out with the Service /Notice sheets.