View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
[00:00:11] Well, today's readings are just full of amazing things said about Jesus.
[00:00:16] And it's all just, it's all wrapped in mystery, you know, like what do you even make of this reading from, from Hebrews, saying things like, Jesus Christ is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
[00:00:42] Chew on that for a minute or a lifetime.
[00:00:48] So let's chew on it.
[00:00:51] Alright? So first of all, this should make us think of something. And we'll think of it. I'll bring us there. So he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. Let's start there.
[00:01:12] It's different than what we hear in Genesis about the creation of man, but it's, it's similar as well.
[00:01:21] God said, let us make man in our own image.
[00:01:26] Then we hear that in the image of God, he created him in the likeness of God.
[00:01:31] Okay? And Jesus Christ is the exact imprint of his nature. Kind of like if you were into sealing your letters with a ring or something like that in wax. It's like the imprint there you see the imprint and then you can by implication you can see what the ring looks like.
[00:01:56] That's the image of the imprint. It's the same thing as the image. God says, let us make man in our own image and likeness. Well, what's that?
[00:02:07] Kind of like when you. Well, not when I do it, but when somebody, we're with skill, paints a picture of somebody, let's say somebody's painting a portrait that's a likeness of the person. It's an image of the person. So that really I didn't live back when George Washington did. But if I look at a painting of George Washington, there he is.
[00:02:33] I would have no idea what he looked like unless I had seen a painting of him. Because somebody sat there and painted him.
[00:02:44] Now just think about what that means about human nature, the way we were created, that God decided, let's make man in our own image and likeness.
[00:02:57] Well, the painting has a function. The job of the painting is to show us the subject of the painting.
[00:03:06] It's so that people could look at the painting and see George Washington.
[00:03:11] Well, God made us in his image and likeness. Why? There's a purpose. The image has a purpose so that.
[00:03:21] Well, so that God's own nature, God's own likeness would be seen in us.
[00:03:32] Well, that's amazing.
[00:03:35] You could see it in the task that God gave Adam and Eve to have dominion over everything. Well, that's what God does as the king, as the Creator, rules and reigns over everything and manages everything so that it flourishes altogether.
[00:03:55] That's the job that he gave to humanity, to have dominion and to rule and reign and to manage as he would.
[00:04:05] So that in seeing our dominion, in seeing our participation in God's own work of ruling over his creation, people might see God, an image of God, the likeness of God.
[00:04:25] Well, that's just amazing that God would do that. Now, that's not necessarily how we think of human beings all the time or ourselves. A lot of the time I think of myself as just. Well, I just think of pleasing myself or enjoying myself or having people think well of me.
[00:04:45] We get into this mode of forgetting that we are made for a purpose, that we're made in the image of God and in the likeness of God for a purpose. And that forgetfulness.
[00:04:59] It's the pattern of the first sin where all of a sudden Eve and then Adam with her, they weren't thinking about what they were made for or who they were made by or whose image they bore.
[00:05:16] Now it was about what they could get. Wisdom or tasty fruit.
[00:05:25] So on Christmas Day, as we see Jesus come in the flesh for us and for our salvation, we remember also what we've lost, that we've sinned and sort of destroyed, messed up the image of God.
[00:05:49] In John here we see a little piece of that. So first of all, Jesus Christ is the word of God, who was with God in the beginning and through whom all things were made. And again, pulling in from that reading from Hebrews, he's the exact imprint of God's nature and the radiance, like the sort of showing forth of his glory.
[00:06:15] And he has come, the Son of God has come to make us sons of God, to make us children of God.
[00:06:25] To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
[00:06:34] Now children are. Well, my children. I'm a human being and my children are human beings.
[00:06:42] That's the way it works.
[00:06:45] A duck has children and those children are ducks.
[00:06:49] That's just we.
[00:06:51] Well, here we're called children of God.
[00:06:57] That's amazing.
[00:06:59] Like Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he's come to make us sons of God.
[00:07:05] He's the exact imprint of God's nature and he's come to restore us in the image of God.
[00:07:14] He's the radiance of God's. Glory. And he's come so that we would once again radiate the glory of God.
[00:07:22] That image is important and it's beautiful. The radiance, the sun. You wouldn't see the sun except for the rays that come from it.
[00:07:31] That's how we know that the sun's there. Same with anything. It's the light bouncing off of you that's showing me you the radiance of God's glory. Jesus Christ has come so that we would see God in him.
[00:07:46] He's come as the radiance of God's glory. But not just that, but so that you would be restored in the image of God, so that you would become a child of God in him and that you would again radiate God's glory for those around you.
[00:08:03] What purpose? You know, in human nature, you were created for a purpose.
[00:08:11] You were made in God's image and restored in God's image in Jesus Christ so that you as children of God, would reflect him, so that others would see in you God. Now, how does this happen?
[00:08:27] How does this happen? It's by faith, so this is obvious here in this verse. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
[00:08:39] It's by receiving Jesus Christ.
[00:08:43] Now, receiving Jesus Christ isn't a given. We hear that earlier in the passage. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. We're going to dwell on this word for a second because it's interesting and helpful. So the light shines in the darkness. The darkness has not overcome it. That word is hard to translate into English. Overcome.
[00:09:06] The light shines in the darkness. The darkness has not overcome it.
[00:09:10] It means like to receive or understand.
[00:09:15] Okay? And then overcome is like an intensification of that. Let's go with understand. The darkness has not understood it, has not received it. So last night I talked about physics. Let's just use physics again, okay? So if a guy with a PhD in physics comes and. And start saying something, somebody might receive it, but I wouldn't even know how to receive it. I don't have a way to receive what he would have to teach. And so it would just go over my head.
[00:09:51] For somebody who understands it, it might be enlightening. They might all of a sudden understand.
[00:09:58] The light bulb might go on. And now they've been enlightened and they understand and they. A world is opened to them in the realm of physics.
[00:10:07] Imagine Jesus Christ coming as the light of the world, and he's Shining.
[00:10:13] But what normally happens when you turn on a light. If all the lights were off in here and then we turned on the light, the darkness would go away. Why? Because it has received the light.
[00:10:25] It's gone now.
[00:10:27] But this picture of unbelief here, the darkness has not received it. The darkness has not received the light. It has not understood the light and not receiving it. It's an odd thing that the light would be there, but then the darkness would be like holding onto its darkness. Nope.
[00:10:49] But that's the image of unbelief. That's persistence in the pattern of the sin of Adam and Eve who looked away from God. The light was right there, but they looked somewhere else. They weren't going to see it. They looked to the devil and to their own desires and well, gave up what they had been given. Being made in God's image to receive from him and to imitate him and then to embody his nature.
[00:11:17] Jesus Christ has come the light of the world to enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
[00:11:27] He's come. And how do we receive what he has to give?
[00:11:33] By receiving Him.
[00:11:35] By looking to him and meditating on him?
[00:11:40] By chewing on him. By receiving him. It sounds weird, right? But like chewing on Jesus Christ and digesting what we hear and learn so that it becomes a part of us. Or you think of the Lord's Supper, really.
[00:11:56] Jesus offers himself to us while he comes in a feeding trough in a manger so that we would receive him, so that we would consider him and chew on him in the Lord's Supper. Jesus actually offers us his body and blood so that receiving him we would become what he is.
[00:12:23] Because that's really what he's come to do.
[00:12:26] He is the exact imprint of God's nature.
[00:12:30] The Son of the Father, the radiance of his glory.
[00:12:35] And he's come and become what we are.
[00:12:39] He became what we are so that we would become what he is.
[00:12:45] There's a verse in Peter that says that we participate in the divine nature.
[00:12:55] That's amazing.
[00:13:00] That's amazing.
[00:13:02] And considering what God has given to us, that we would become children of God, and John says so we are in one of his letters, that we would become children of God.
[00:13:16] That's enough to just keep us in awe as we consider that the rest of the day and the rest of our life until he comes again in glory, judges the living and the dead, raises us up and brings us to Himself forever. Thanks be to God in Jesus name, Amen.
[00:13:39] Merry Christmas.