In the beginning......Jesus

In the beginning…..Jesus

                                                            Colossians 1:15-20

                                                            Genesis 1:1-2

In the beginning……Jesus

Jesus in Genesis……..

What are you talking about Paul?

Jesus is never mentioned in Genesis!

His name- Jesus, is not even written in Genesis.

You could accuse me of having a Jesus lens when I read the bible……and I am OK with that…..

The preacher/ pastor Charles Spurgeon was accused of having a Jesus lens on when he read the bible, just listen to this story he told with one of his students.

You remember the story of the old minister who heard a sermon by a young man, and when he was asked by the preacher what he thought of it:

he was rather slow to answer,

but at last he said,

 “If I must tell you, I did not like it at all; there was no Christ in your sermon.”

“No,” answered the young man, “because I did not see that Christ was in the text.”

 “Oh!” said the old minister, “but do you not know that from every little town and village and tiny hamlet in England there is a road leading to London?

Whenever I get hold of a text, I say to myself, ‘There is a road from here to Jesus Christ, and I mean to keep on His track till I get to Him.’”

“Well,” said the young man, “but suppose you are preaching from a text that says nothing about Christ?”

“I I will go over hedge and ditch but what I will get at Him.”

I love it.

You could preach the most brilliant exegetical sermon in the world, with all the correct parsing of the greek, all the Hebrew foundation, but if you never preach Jesus, you never get anywhere.

Friends, we must read the bible through the lens of Jesus, but why?

Because Jesus himself said that all the scriptures, that it all the scriptures/ the bible from the first words in Genesis 1:1, in the beginning God, to the last words in Revelation…..may the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all…..they are all about Jesus.

When Jesus was being confronted by the pharisees and scribes, (for the nth time) and the scribes were again trying to use their knowledge of the scriptures to prove their superiority over Jesus, Jesus said these words, which you find in John 5:39-40

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life

Jesus told the pharisees and scribes who were experts in the scriptures, that if they didn’t find a road to Jesus through the scriptures, then they didn’t find eternal life.

This is why we need to continue to pray for the Jews.

The Jews read the scriptures but never get to Jesus. They still believe that they can gain eternal life by their law keeping, their study of the scriptures, the act of circumcision, the keeping of all the festivals, and yet because they don’t read the scriptures in the light of Jesus, they will not gain eternal life.

Remember when Jesus met those two disciples on the road to Emmaus. During that long walk, Jesus explained to them this, it is found in Luke 24: 27

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Jesus explained to these two disciples everything in the scriptures that concerned himself and we can safely assume that, that meant all the scriptures- Moses represents the law and the prophets represent all the other writings in the Old Testament.

All the bible, all the scriptures are about Jesus….

And so, as we go through this topic of “Jesus in Genesis”, it is good and right that as we go through our series in Genesis, that you are constantly thinking about how this text links to the work and person of Jesus- some roads are very obvious, some not so…….

God in his wisdom connected the roads for us, when he inspired the New Testament writers to inform us, what the Old Testament books were talking about.

The Apostles constantly interpreted the Old Testament in the light of Jesus for us.

Like the disciple John, who tells us that Jesus was there at the beginning of creation, or the apostle Paul who tells us in Galatians that the promise of the offspring to Abraham was Jesus Himself, or as the writer of Hebrews tells us that it was Jesus who has the high priest in the order of Melchizedek, and on and on I could go……but I won’t….we will get to those things over the next couple of months.

But today we are going to start at the beginning…..always a good place to start………In the beginning Jesus.

And what I will do is show you Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1 on the screen

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, God……….

By the way, that is perhaps were a lot of humanity falls apart……they just don’t believe that in the beginning……….God…….some believe that in the beginning…..nothing, or in the beginning….mother nature, or in the beginning…..black hole, but they don’t believe that in the beginning……..God.

Those who don’t believe in the beginning have a great faith in nothing.

And for those who believe…….. in the beginning…….God, they fall apart at who that God is…..which God made clear to us, when he came to this earth.

Look at John 1:1 with me:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.

John made it clear that, that God was and is Jesus.

He the disciple John says here that in the beginning was the word…….and that word is Jesus, as he tells us in the same chapter in verse 14, he wrote this…..

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us

The word that John talks about is Jesus, because Jesus was the one who came down to our earth, being born as one of us, being born as a man to dwell, tabernacle, live amongst us.

So, knowing that the word is Jesus, let me read what John wrote again in the first two verses.

In the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God. Jesus was in the beginning with God.

John tells us that Jesus was both God and He was with God at the same time.

How does that work?

I don’t know……. it is the mystery of the trinity- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This means that Jesus was not only there in the beginning of creation with God his father, but he was also there before the creation, before anything existed Jesus was there, his Father was there, his Spirit was there,

Listen to the prayer that Jesus prayed to his father before he went to the cross,

you will find this in John 17:5

5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

Jesus makes it clear that before the world existed, He and his Father and the Holy Spirit, were in glorious unity.

Let us just think about that remarkable prayer for one minute.

Jesus told us, that before the world existed, God’s Glory existed.

That means that God doesn’t need this world to display his Glory, God doesn’t need you or me to display his glory, God doesn’t need his church to display his glory, since his glory was there before all those things existed and yet out of his mercy, out of his love, for the sake of his name, he chose to display his glory through his creation.

That is why we exist friends, to display God’s glory, and the most glorious way that we display God’s Glory is to bow our knee, pay homage and confess that his Son- Jesus is Lord.

We display God’s glory by humbling accepting that Jesus, the eternal God, stepped off his throne in heaven, came down to this earth, as one of us, to save us from our sins.

It was at the cross that God’s Glory was most magnificently displayed.

But why is it important for you to know, that Jesus was and is the eternal God, God the Father, son and Holy Spirit?

What difference does that make to you?

Well, I want to assure you today that your salvation that came to you through Jesus was no after thought by God. Your salvation that Jesus brought to you, was not some after-thought, some amended tax cut, some better plan, but the salvation that Jesus has brought to you, was a plan that Jesus and His father planned before time and was brought to fruition at the cross.

Listen to this promise from Ephesians 1:3-6

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

Let me break down that promise for you….

God chose you to be Holy (that is set apart from him) and blameless before him (that means for sinful people to enjoy a relationship with a holy God)

And the only way we can be Holy and blameless is if we are in Christ, that means we trust that Jesus died for our sins, paid our penalty, lived our perfect live.

And so, God chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world.

Which means that God planned the cross of Christ before the creation of the world, since it is the only way we can be Holy- set apart for God.

Keeping God’s law makes us holy, but we simply cannot keep God’s laws perfectly, as the nation of Israel showed us again and again.

God chose us to be adopted into his family through Jesus and only through Jesus….and why did God the father and God the son plan all of this before creation?

To the praise of his glorious grace…..

He set out the plan of salvation in Jesus for the praise of his glorious grace, or put more simply – for his glory.

He didn’t need to save us for His Glory, since his glory existed before the creation, but he chose to save us in Jesus, to display his glory.

Friends, if you are a disciple of Jesus, it is to the Glory of God, not our own, but his.

It is to God’s glory that the global and local church exists.

You wonder why God would use this messy vehicle we call church at times, but he does, and he uses his church to display his glory, as individuals whom he has redeemed and purchased by his blood gather together and show their communities that it is by God’s grace and for his glory that he has redeemed us.

Friends, it is important for us to know that God’s plan of salvation in Jesus, which he planned before time, was not plan b, c, or d , but it was always plan A.

And at this particular time, we need to know that God’s first plan of salvation was NOT through the nation of Israel, and when that failed, he turned to Jesus.

Nope, Jesus- the true Israel, was always the plan A of salvation.

The gospel writers make it crystal clear that Jesus was always the true Israel, He was always  plan A of Salvation.

It is no coincidence that God called the nation of Israel his firstborn, his beloved son. It was the nation of Israel that God chose from all the nations amongst the earth to be his treasured possession. It was through the nation of Israel whom God displayed his Glory. And yet it was through his only beloved son- Jesus that his glory was fully displayed on the cross.

It was the nation of Israel that was often referred to as the vine.

And yet Jesus came and told us he was the true vine, it was him who gave life, to the branches, not the nation of Israel.

Matthew, one of the gospel writers makes it clear that just as Israel, God’s beloved son came out of Egypt as God saved them, it was Jesus, the true Israel, his one and only beloved son, who came out of Egypt after he had spent some time in hiding from the murderous Herod.

This is what Matthew wrote about Jesus in Matthew 2

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

Matthew tells us that what the prophet Hosea wrote about in Hosea chapter 11 verse 1, was, yes, talking about Israel and the exodus back in the prophet’s day, but Matthew actually tells us, that it found it’s true meaning in Jesus.

Look at what Hosea wrote in chapter 11 verse 1

When Israel was a child, I loved him,    and out of Egypt I called my son.

And so, when Hosea wrote that Israel was God’s son, Mathew tells us that Hosea was also talking about Jesus. When Hosea wrote about God taking Israel out of Egypt, he was also talking about God taking Jesus out of Egypt, to show the time when Jesus and his family hid in Egypt for a while, during the time Herod wanted to kill Him.

Now whether Hosea knew he was talking about Jesus or not- it doesn’t really matter, since the Matthew tells us he was.

Remember, it is good and right to read the bible with a Jesus lens.

The fact is, the nation of Israel was never God’s plan A of salvation, and we know this because Israel failed again and again, they failed to live in perfect obedience to God their father.

Jesus, on the other hand, the true Israel, God’s beloved son, he did live in perfect obedience to his father and so this is why it was only his perfect sacrifice which would atone for the sins of the world.

Jesus did what the nation of Israel failed to do, remain faithful to God their father.

Jesus did, what we all fail to do, to live in perfect obedience to God.

Friends, let me again encourage you today, to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, as the writer of Hebrews tells us, he is not only the founder of our faith, but he is the perfecter of our faith.

Let us pray.