Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

We are people that crave knowledge.

We want to know how things work, we want to discover things to advance life and to increase comfort and ease.

But we are also a people who is very much concerned with origins.

People will travel to Ellis Island, or now they can do it all from the internet, to find out when they arrived to America.

Some will do DNA studies to figure out where their ancestors are from.

Or you can register on various sites such as ancestry.com

to figure out who your distance relatives are.

It does not really affect us very much does it.

But we have a desire to know who we are and where we are from.

It is innate within us.

Even when you meet someone for the very first time, you want to know who they are (what is your name) and where they are from.

This curiosity has been there for as long as time has been around.

One speculated that

18,000 years, the first living being was P’an Ku, who grew inside a cosmic egg.

When he hatched, the shell above him became the sky while the piece below became the earth.

The opposites in nature were separated as well—male and female, wet and dry, light and dark, yin and yang, etc.

After all this effort, P’an Ku literally fell to pieces and his features became the natural world.

His limbs turned into mountains, his blood to rivers, his breath the wind, his voice the thunder, his hair the grass, his sweat the rain, and so on.

His left eye became the sun and his right became the moon.

Some people say that the parasites on P’an Ku’s body became mankind.

Others say that, many centuries after P’an Ku’s death, a lonely goddess named Nü Wa saw her reflection in a pond and made some beings like herself out of mud.

These became the aristocrats.

Creating these beings was hard work, though, so Nü Wa swung a muddy vine through the air and its droplets became the commoners.

Years later, the heavens collapsed, creating holes in the earth through which waters rose to form a great flood.

Nü Wa patched the earth, but became exhausted by her labors and died.

Her body became yet more features of the world.

inside a cosmic egg.

When he hatched, the shell above him became the sky while the piece below became the earth.

The opposites in nature were separated as well—male and female, wet and dry, light and dark, yin and yang, etc.

After all this effort, P’an Ku literally fell to pieces and his features became the natural world.

His limbs turned into mountains, his blood to rivers, his breath the wind, his voice the thunder, his hair the grass, his sweat the rain, and so on.

His left eye became the sun and his right became the moon.

Some people say that the parasites on P’an Ku’s body became mankind.

Now some of you are thinking why is he telling us this?

That is not at all how the world was created.

The Sumerians taught that the sea goddess Nammu ‘the mother, who gave birth to heaven and earth’ evidently created all things and with the help of other gods such as Enlil- the king of all lands and organizer of the earth and its argicultural features were responsible for what we have and see around us.

Others say that, many centuries after P’an Ku’s death, a lonely goddess named Nü Wa saw her reflection in a pond and made some beings like herself out of mud.

These became the aristocrats.

Creating these beings was hard work, though, so Nü Wa swung a muddy vine through the air and its droplets became the commoners.

Years later, the heavens collapsed, creating holes in the earth through which waters rose to form a great flood.

Nü Wa patched the earth, but became exhausted by her labors and died.

Her body became yet more features of the world.

The Akkadians had a different account recorded in the creation epic we know as Enuma Elish.

In Enuma Elish the human race is made from the blood of Kingu, leader of a rebel horde against the creator god Marduk.

The Egyptians, the Levantines, and many others have their own creation accounts.

And it some are very entertaining.

One of my favorites is how 18,000 years, the first living being was P’an Ku, who grew inside a cosmic egg.

When he hatched, the shell above him became the sky while the piece below became the earth.

The opposites in nature were separated as well—male and female, wet and dry, light and dark, yin and yang, etc.

After all this effort, P’an Ku literally fell to pieces and his features became the natural world.

His limbs turned into mountains, his blood to rivers, his breath the wind, his voice the thunder, his hair the grass, his sweat the rain, and so on.

His left eye became the sun and his right became the moon.

Some people say that the parasites on P’an Ku’s body became mankind.

How did we get here?

Well, l

Body

How did we get here?

Well, last week, we looked at how John, from his opening words brought the reader to the fact that Jesus is God.

That bears weight in not just the words that would follow in his book.

But it bears weight to everyone’s lives because being God, He makes the rules.

He does not submit to humanity or to false deities.

He is God.

And that is a comfort as well, because we know that Jesus is God.

He was not a lunatic, he was not a crazy man that said some wise fortune cookie things.

He spoke the truth as he himself is the truth.

But this morning John presses into the mind of the readers the fact that Jesus is not only God.

But Jesus is Creator.

And like we had discussed very briefly this morning several creation myths, John is not shy in saying things that may hurt people’s feelings.

He tells them the truth.

And it is a wonder that even nowadays, there is still a challenge in this.

We have modern interpreters of the Bible claiming facts contrary to His Word.

For example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that Jesus is not God.

But that he is actually Michael the Archangel who became a man.

He is a created being.

The Mormon’s or LDS teach that Jesus is the first spirit born of God.

And that Satan is his spirit brother.

Islam, buddhism and atheism teaches that Jesus was just a wise prophet.

A man of wisdom and good works.

But stated very clearly to us that Jesus is not created, but eternal from the beginning of beginnings.

That he was more than a man, but God.

And not only that, but Jesus created everything.

Not one thing that has come into existence is by accident.

Jesus created it.

John wants to be perfectly clear about it so he says all things which were created.

So everything that can fall into the category of being created is from God.

And if you read that with any ambiguity, John says a second time, apart from Him, not one thing was created.

So we have here being expressed that Jesus created everything.

So if you were to try and run through a list of created things, you can find their authorship to be Jesus.

But is this just John.

Well the author of Hebrews would be in agreement

“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe” (Heb.

1:1–2).

Well Paul expresses the same thing in

the firstborn over all creation.

h

vs 15-16 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

16 For everything was created by Him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him.

16 For everything was created by Him,

in heaven and on earth,

the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him.