And now as Paul Harvey would say . . . 

Well we end our time together by coming full circle back to Genesis 1. We have seen how God reveals Himself to us through the beauty of his creation around us. God tells us He exists and tells us about Himself in His words to us the Bible. We’ve seen our response to God’s gift of creation that He prepared for us by living in open rebellion and in sin. (Gen 3)

We have seen God’s response by continuing to pursue us to guide us and build our faith. Like Abraham and that He is with us in our deep times of fear and pain like Joseph. John chapter 1:1-18 is a great chapter to bring things together. Jesus has revealed God to us. The final way we see God here is through the person of Jesus Christ. The incarnation, the visited planet of God coming to us in human flesh.

We began our journey together in Genesis looking at the question where was God before He made earth and the answer is the same, He is eternal, He always existed. John tells us here that the Word, which is Jesus, created everything. He spoke and by his Word, everything came into being except us. We were created by God, handmade in His image! And God breathed life into us.

John tells us before the beginning, Jesus existed and Jesus was with God and Jesus was God. Remember back in Gen 1:27 the “let us make man in our image” is a reference to the trinity. Verse 4 says the Word gave life to everything and everything was created through him. Then John shifts his analogy from the Word to the light. Remember out of a dark void came this light bursting on the scene in Genesis 1? And that’s what we have with Jesus, a bright light bursting on to the scene. Some people think that God created us and then we sinned in Genesis 3 and God didn’t plan for that so he had to make a backup plan and that was Jesus.

But the truth is, God’s plan of redemption preceded our disobedience. It wasn’t an afterthought. The divine trinity planned our redemption. In Genesis 3 right after our rejection of God, He provides clothes and a blood sacrifice that we see as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and bloodshed to cleanse our sins.

Ephesians 1:4 God’s people, you were chosen before all this was created! How awesome is that! Have you ever thought about that? You were chosen by God to be on His side before anything was created by his Grace alone. We see Jesus tells us about God’s plan of redeeming us in his prayer right before he was crucified in John 17:1-7. “I have revealed you to the ones you gave me before the world even began” He ends the prayer in verse 25-26 then your love for me will be in them and I will be in them.

Acts 2:23, 24 Jesus’ death was not an accident, the light could not be extinguished! God didn’t create the world because he was bored or lonely. He created everything so that He could share his love with creatures who were made in the image of God and can respond willingly to his love.

Paul does an amazing job in Ephesians of telling the whole story of God’s pursuit of us and God’s plan of bringing you and me back into intimate fellowship with him before the fall, before we ran from God. Let’s read Ephesians 1:2-14 now. As you read, look for the Trinity in this passage. We were chosen by God the father verse 3-6, purchased by the son verse 7-12 and sealed by the spirit verse 13-14. All of this is to praise and glorify God and the result is you and I get adopted by God and we have the gift of living in eternity with God and all this wasn’t a big mistake, it was God’s plan before there was ever a world!