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October 9, 2005
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"In the Beginning"
John 1: 1-14
I. Not a very creative title, I know. Titles are not my specialty. And for those of you who are avid newsletter readers, you may notice that the passage of Scripture and the topic has changed today. I felt led of the Lord to save a study of 2 Peter until next year.
So, today, it is "in the beginning." Made me think of John 1 and Genesis 1, for this phrase begins both those books. So, with a few words I was taken to the very beginning of creation, where it says that God did something. He created.
In thinking of the very beginning, though, I am dipping back further as we did a few weeks back, into the God behind the beginning, for God always has been, before anyone else was.
This is the God who was before a "beginning" could be named, for the very word "beginning" tells you something started, and if something started, there had to be someone who started something prior to that beginning.
In John we hear that God the Father and the Word were in the beginning, starting everything together, for the "Word was with God, and the Word was God." And by implication, John is speaking too of the Holy Spirit by whose power the Word would be made flesh in Mary. We learn this is the God of light, of true light even, the God of life, who brings life to all who believe.
All this follows the beginning.
Ah but there is more. This God sent forth a man to precede the coming of the Word. This is the pattern God uses always… He precedes the Word with a person. Even in preaching, God precedes the Word, what is heard, with the person, through whom it is heard.
There is no Word from God that can issue forth without some person involved. God sends little lights before the big lights.
This my friends has a theological term attached to it. It is called "God's Prevenient Grace"
II. Now with theology terms like Prevenient and Grace it might help if we understood them.
"Prevenient" is not a word you probably used today or yesterday and even the word "grace" beyond being a great church word is not something that pops out of our mouths very often.
Prevenient actually comes from a word meaning to come before.
And Grace - you may remember, is not a mysterious substance but a word describing the activity of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the life of an individual. Grace is the real work of God within and upon a person.
So, God brings his grace into our lives before we believe. God works in us through others along the way.
I have told you before about my sojourn in Newton Iowa selling Bibles door to door.
I had this little black case filled with my sample books but my heart was quaking with fear. Fear that I would not be allowed to talk, fear people would be angry, fear that I would fail. That was the worst. But it seemed that more often than not, those upon whose doors I knocked were expecting me and they met me with a question: "Are you saved? What is the date and the hour?" Now I faced a problem: I did not know the answer.
Sure, I had gone to church as a kid, but to my recollection the pastor had never spoken of being saved but these folks witnessed to me, they invited me to their churches on Sundays, they continued to challenge me to turn to faith. I knew one of two things were true: either I had been saved and now I was walking in the wilderness of doubt, or I was not saved, and wanted to be. So, at 11:30 pm at night on May 23rd 1978, I knelt by my spring mattress bed in the basement apartment I shared with two buddies, and told God just what I have told you. And something happened. Jesus who had been distant became near, I began to hear His voice, He directed my paths, He began to change my heart so that I grew in compassion toward those around me, and beginning there changed my life.
In Newton I experienced the fact that God's grace had gone before me, in taking me to that town and to those doors. God had stirred hearts and caused people to pray for me before I knocked. Friends told friends I was coming. This was not just people but God moving through people who put flesh on Jesus. There were those who invited me in for lunch, told me about their faith, and took me to church.
God was even moving through the man who met me at the door with his gun and told me that if he saw me near his house again, he would shoot me. Suddenly this selling business was serious business and as I ran to the next house to knock on another door, God met me with grace and mercy and a sale.
The holy Trinity was moving in these daily contacts and conversations to stir my own heart to hunger for something more, to ache for God, to long to know this One about whom I had heard but whom I did not know. This was all of grace.
But what of the grace of God which preceded Newton? Had God been working in my life prior to then?
Indeed! Wasn't God also present in the very name and witness of my grandmother Faith Power who taught me that there is no power like faith, and my parents whose daily living of their faith showed me what faith can do, and Mrs Lawrence who taught Sunday School and was the first one to tell me the stories of Jesus. This was all preparation for Newton and the day of my conversion.
III. Yes we have a God who goes before, as God sent John the Baptist before Jesus, God has sent and sends many John the Baptists ahead of my life and has been sending many ahead of your life too. These "little lights" are people whose lives witness to the reality of Jesus Christ.
It may have been the woman next door to whose home you could go to enjoy milk and cookies after school, a snack your own mom never would have served you. Along with the snack was the love present in that home.
It may have been a Sunday School teacher, a co worker, a boss, a friend whose life showed forth Christ's.
It may have been someone who with fear and trembling told you about who Jesus is, but whose words found a way to your heart. Whoever, however God's grace goes before.
There is no counting the Lights that go before, but be assured, John precedes Jesus in the human life. Little lights precede the greater Light of Christ. Statistically we know that it takes about 10 witnesses in a person's life before turning to Jesus. So, God pours forth grace, God works in our lives, God brings forth experience after experience, allowing the good, the bad and sometimes the ugly as people choose sin around us, in order that we can turn from sin and pride and ugliness to the grace and mercy and power of God.
Prevenient Grace speaks of this momentum, this dynamic action of the light and love of the Triune God moving powerfully through the Holy Spirit to awaken and transform individual lives.
IV. God's move always comes first, like the hymn we will sing in a moment declares.
I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek Him seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Savior true; no, I was found of Thee.
Thou didst reach forth thy hand and mine enfold;
I walked and sank not on the storm-vexed sea.
'Twas not so much that I on thee took hold,
As thou, dear Lord, on me.
I find, I walk, I love, but oh,
the whole of love is but my answer, Lord, to thee!
For Thou wert long beforehand my soul; always thou lovedst me.
(anon. c.1890, public domain, found in UMH 341)
Always You loved me! the hymnwriter declared.
How much the whole of the Bible testifies to this.
It was God who called Abram from Ur into dynamic relationship, taking him to the promised land, a place he had never heard of before, in order to make of one man a nation.
It was God who positioned that nation for a mighty deliverance, who called them out of Egypt through the mouth of Moses in order to make them a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.
It was God who sent forth the prophets calling that nation to turn from wickedness and sin and return to the Living God, their Rock. God said through the mouth of Jeremiah, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." God said through Hosea that he was wooing faithless Israel to return. God promised again and again to send a Savior, the ultimate expression of His great love. "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believed in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world but that the world should be saved through Him" (John 3:16-17).
God acted first, God loved first, God sent His Son because God wants relationship with you and with me. This is the action of God's Prevenient Grace, that action of the triune God in real, tangible, daily ways that gets our attention; that catches our eye, that causes us to pause in our mad pursuit of what is before us.
V. Yes, God was thinking of you before you ever had a thought toward God.
It is God who brought you here today, in this moment, to let you glimpse just how big His love is as to orchestrate lots and lots of little lights to point to you to Him.
God's Grace goes before conversion, before our birth even, God is moving, planning, working in order that we can know the living Triune God of relationship.
It is this God who caught hold of my heart in Newton, IA, as I knelt beside my wire spring mattress bed, seeking to be honest with the God I did not know but who rejoiced to have brought me to that place.
Are you going to do all in your power to open your heart more to God and accept the relationship God offers you in Jesus Christ? Or if you have already taken that step maybe God's grace is calling you to an even deeper step of discipleship.
How will you respond to God's call upon you?
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