Transcription downloaded from https://yetanothersermon.host/_/bellshill_baptist/sermons/50387/he-entered-his-creation-that-we-might-know-him/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] Many thanks to the Harmony Trio, as their official name, and thank you very much. That was wonderful. Well, tonight I just want to bring a short thought from that line, really, that Ruth read from Max Licado when Mary is looking at this child. Think about what she must have been thinking.

[0:22] All this promise of something impossible, that she had never known a man, yet here is a child in her arms.

[0:34] How is that possible, except through God? And that line that Max Licado thinks when she looks down and thinks, how long was your journey? And so I want to think about that, how long, I don't know where you've come from tonight, how long was your journey? But let's ponder this, how long was his journey?

[0:57] And so this will be no surprise to those of you who know me, to delve into a bit of space geek. The farthest thing that we can observe in the universe is around 47 billion light years away.

[1:15] 47 billion light years away. In any direction you can point the greatest telescope ever, 47 billion light years is the limit to what we can currently observe. So that makes at least the observable universe around 94 billion light years across. Unbelievable. Now, whatever your view of the size of the universe, let me tell you is most likely to be much smaller than it actually is. The universe is immense. Whatever your view on who this child is, for any of us, is likely to be much, much smaller than the reality of who he is. Now, imagine this. Imagine 94 billion light years, observable universe.

[2:09] That's not 94 billion miles. That's 94 billion light years. Do you know how far a light year is? Does anyone in this room know how far a light year is? Now, light travels, just to put this into perspective, if you're in your car, right, your Bugatti Veyron, the fastest car. If you're in your car, light travels at 670 million miles per hour. It's the fastest thing in the universe, light.

[2:45] Photons. Light is the fastest thing. It's the limit, the speed limit of the universe. 97 million miles per hour. And in one year, light can travel 6 trillion miles. So, a light year is 6 trillion miles long.

[3:05] That's the ruler. That's the measurement that you need to use when you're looking at the universe. One light year is 6 trillion miles. That's the distance that light can travel in a year.

[3:18] But still, even for the fastest thing in the universe, for the fastest thing, light, in the universe, it would take 47 billion years for that to get from the edge of what we can observe to earth. From the edge of all we can observe to earth, 47 billion years traveling at 670 million miles per hour. I mean, the universe is vast. The universe is staggeringly huge, unbelievably enormous, stupendously immense. And that's just a small bit that we can observe. Seriously, you've underestimated how big this universe is and how small we are. The scale is so incomprehensibly colossal that it may be easy to forget that all of us still only occupies the realm of created things.

[4:21] In 1 John 1.5, it says that God is light. And in John's gospel, John says that light came into the world. Now, for Jesus, how long was your journey? It didn't take him 47 billion years to make it from outside of the universe into earth. Yet, that little account that Ruth read, Mary pondered how long the journey was for this child. His journey, not just from outside the created realm of the universe, but his journey from divine glory to the dirt and hay of a stable. The distance he traveled was farther than we can possibly comprehend. The border he crossed was a border from uncreated to created. That's a border that we can never cross, but he did. See, we always live in the created side, but he came from the uncreated side and crossed that border that only he can cross. When you consider the tremendous vastness of the universe, we are indescribably tiny. Yet, even the universe is smaller than a speck of dust to the infinite God who created it. How can such a limitless, infinite, eternal creator even begin to lower himself and squeeze himself and squeeze himself into one of the smallest creatures in his universe?

[5:58] Now, of course, part of the answer is that God never changed. God has never changed. He is immutable and unchanging. Nothing of his infinite, omnipresent, divine nature has ever changed. He didn't lose any of his godness when he became a human. Neither did he change anything in his godness, but he took on a human nature.

[6:28] He added a human nature. He took and created a human nature, and he personified it through the Son. The Son who created his human nature animated and personified it.

[6:46] Is this too much for your brain? Because it's too much for mine. The point is, we can only come to him because he first came to us. We can only know him because he revealed himself in created form. You see, think about that. Because of our very created nature, we can only perceive things in created ways. We don't even see all of light. We don't even see the UV to the infrared. We see a small slither of light. We hear a small range of what can be heard.

[7:29] We can only perceive things in created ways. And this is why God revealed himself in created ways. This is what David said in Psalm 19 when he said, the heavens declare the glory of God. God is revealing himself in the heavens.

[7:46] In Romans chapter 1, Paul says that God's invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, are clearly perceived in the things that he has made. Look around you.

[7:58] Furthermore, Hebrews says that God revealed himself in his word. Through the spoken and written word of God, he revealed himself. We can only perceive him in created ways. But ultimately, greater than any of this, he revealed himself through his Son, taking on a human nature and personifying it with the person of God the Son. You see, when John, Jesus' friend, said in John 1.18, no one, no one has ever seen God. No one. How can anyone see God? How can the created see the uncreated? We can't. No one has ever seen God.

[8:46] God. The only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. And what John is saying is, God came from the uncreated realm into creation to reveal something that we can never otherwise perceive. He shows that journey from the uncreated side to the created side, the journey from eternal, divine infinity to a time and a place and a limited space, a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths lying in a manger in Bethlehem. And then later on, Jesus said to Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. If you're looking at me, then you have seen God.

[9:34] The Son has come from the very place of the uncreated God, and he has made him visible and knowable to the world. The only way that we can come to God is because he first came to us. The very source of our life and breath came to be with us where we are so that we could be with him where he is. The one who holds the whole of the cosmos together came to us. The heartbeat of creation stooped down lower than we could possibly imagine. And so what can we give that isn't already his?

[10:19] What could we ever do for the one who needs nothing because he gives to us life and breath and everything? If you want to know what you are truly made for, if you want to know the purpose of your existence, then turn your heart toward him. Put your heart in the one who makes it beat, and you will know light and life and love divine.