He Made All Things | Sunday, June 29, 2025

Amen. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Anthony and team. Good morning, everyone. You can have a seat. Welcome! We're so glad that you are here this morning to worship with us.

If you have been with us anytime during the last few weeks, you know that this summer marks the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Council and the creed that came out of it. So, what exactly is that? Well, in 325 AD, many of the Christian leaders, the bishops of the church in and around the Mediterranean, gathered together in what was then the ancient Greek city of Nicaea, which is now in modern northern Turkey. They convened to address a false teaching that had entered the church, propagated by a pastor from Northern Africa, not too far from Alexandria, named Arius. Arius was teaching that Jesus was a created being and that he was not divine.

Of course, the early church had believed for a couple of centuries and taught that Jesus was divine, that he is God in the flesh—God incarnate. That's what the word "incarnate" means: in the flesh. The leaders of the church gathered together in the summer of 325 AD, 1700 years ago, to affirm their faith and to formalize it into a statement that became the Nicene Creed.

As I've shared over the last few weeks, the Nicene Creed is relatively short; it is only 227 words. It was not intended then, nor is it considered today, to be a comprehensive statement about what Christians believe. It is not necessarily a statement of faith. Instead, it is meant to address a very specific issue that was a problem in the church at that time, concerning the nature of God. More specifically, it deals with the nature of Christ.

This document, consisting of 227 words, discusses the triune nature of God, which is a very difficult teaching and theology to comprehend because our brains are finite, while God is infinite. However, as He is revealed in the Bible, God exists as one God. There is one Lord, as stated in Deuteronomy chapter 6. Yet, He has revealed Himself to us in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This brings about the teaching of the Trinity within the church, and the statement talks about the Father.

The text discusses the Son and the Holy Spirit, making statements about what Christians believe regarding the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's interesting how this is structured; of the 227 words, only 21 pertain to the Father, 37 to the Holy Spirit, and 34 to the Son. The primary focus is really on Jesus, particularly in light of the teaching of Arius, who claimed that Jesus was a created being, a view the church did not accept. This clearly articulates the church's beliefs based on the Bible regarding who Jesus is.

The creed answers the question that Jesus posed to His disciples, recorded in Matthew 16:15. Jesus asked His earliest followers, "Who do you say that I am?" They were responding to His earlier question about what people of the day thought of Him. During His ministry, most people recognized Him as a very spiritual man and referred to Him as a prophet. However, Jesus's question, "Who do you say that I am?" is the crucial one. It was significant 2,000 years ago, important at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and remains pertinent today.

One fascinating aspect of the 227 words contained in the Nicene Creed is that these beliefs have been read and affirmed by Christians for the last 1,700 years, across all places and times throughout the church. While there are significant issues of faith that might divide the church, there are also divisions within it. As I mentioned last week, there are three major branches of the church.

There are Orthodox Christians, primarily found in the eastern parts of the church, such as Greece and areas to the east. Moving west, you encounter Roman Catholics, and some of you may have grown up in a Roman Catholic church. Further west, you find Protestant churches, to which we belong. There are significant divides between Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians. The Great Schism in 1054 AD marked the first major divide between Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

The Reformation was a significant event where Protestants split off from reformed Christianity. Most of the time, we identify 1517 as the year when this took place because there was a Roman Catholic monk by the name of Martin Luther who objected to a number of different things happening within the Roman Church. He wrote a document that came to be known as the 95 Theses. Through the 95 Theses, he aimed to get the Roman Catholic Church back on a right path in line with the teachings of Scripture. He hoped to reform the Roman Catholic Church, but as a result, they excommunicated him. Thus, the Protestant Reformation began in 1517.

We are part of that group of Christians, which includes Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox believers. If you gathered clergy from each of these groups together—a Roman Catholic priest, an Orthodox priest, and a Protestant pastor—we would largely agree on pretty much everything found in these 227 words. This is not to say that there are not important distinctions that separate us from these different groups, but on these core beliefs, we really are in agreement.

As I have emphasized each week, I want to make it clear again that this is not a comprehensive statement of faith. There is a lot in the Bible that Christians believe that is not written in the creed. However, there is nothing in the creed that I see as being inconsistent with the Bible. My aim has been to show that the Nicene Creed is derived directly from Christian Scripture.

The challenge is that there are beliefs we hold that are not included in this document. The creed has nothing to say about salvation—how it is imparted and received. It does not address communion, the Eucharist, or baptism in depth, including the modes of baptism. It does not answer questions about how and when Jesus will return or clarify the different views on eschatology. It also does not speak to how the church ought to be governed—whether it should follow a bishop model or be locally governed by local churches and pastors.

Additionally, it does not discuss what the right Bible translation is, which, of course, is the one that I use. It does not address spiritual gifts, God's sovereignty, or man's free will. You get the point; there are many topics it does not cover. However, these are the core beliefs that we hold to.

We believe about who God is: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are important aspects as we see in this document.

So, what we find in this is point number one, if you're taking notes this morning: the Nicene Creed is a simple statement about God upon which Christians are agreed. These are things that we generally agree on, and that means that when you interact with other believers, wherever they are from today, you discover that we have a really big family.

Like any family, we have some interesting family members. There is a lot of diversity among people who dress differently, look different, talk differently, worship differently, and gather in different ways. But for the most part, on these core issues, we are agreed. We have this very large family.

This statement is something that many people in more Protestant, non-denominational churches like ours may not come in contact with. However, I have found it fascinating over the last several weeks. Just about every week, someone comes up to me who grew up in a more liturgical church, perhaps in a Roman Catholic church, an Orthodox church, or a higher Presbyterian or Lutheran church. They say, "Man, I remember this stuff. We used to quote this." But maybe they didn't realize just how closely aligned it is with Scripture.

My hope in all of this is to say, "Hey, this is in the Bible, and these are things that we hold to and believe."

With that, I’m going to ask you to stand, as I have the last several weeks. We will put the Nicene Creed up on the screens, and we will try to read it together again. Here we read this:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit, He became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made man.

For our sake, He was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day, He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. He is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

God, I do pray as we affirm those words together this morning that You would continue the work that You are desiring to do in each of us, transforming us more and more into the likeness of Your children. We read about Your nature in this passage. I pray, God, that You, by the power of Your Spirit, by the working of the Logos, the Word Jesus, and by Your work in us, Father, would do a work where we begin to show forth Your nature in our lives. It would be evident that You are in our lives because we have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

God, cause Your light to shine upon us and to reflect from us to this world that is in such desperate need of Your grace and Your truth. I pray that we would be ambassadors of Your grace and truth, that we would be conduits through which Your love and grace flow to other people. So, Lord, continue Your work of grace and transformation by Your power, by Your Spirit, and by Your Word in us. We pray this today in Jesus' name. And all those that agreed said, "Amen." You can be seated.

In the time that we have remaining this morning, I want to focus our attention on just six words from this creed. I want to show you that they mean more than you might realize at first glance. The six words are these: "Through Him all things were made." Now, in context, those words from the creed that we just read...

Those six words, "through him all things were made," are talking about Jesus Christ, the Son. Just before that, we affirmed our belief in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. I think it is generally easy for Christians to affirm that they believe in God. The opening statement of the creed is, "We believe in God, the Father, the Almighty." Immediately after we say we believe in God, the Father, the Almighty, we state that He is the maker of heaven and earth. This is not really saying much other than that we have already affirmed our belief in God the Father, who made everything.

However, in reference to the Son, we are saying that through Him, through the Son, all things were made. So why the duplication? Why say the same thing over and over again? What is the reason for this repetition? I do think it is important.

It is really easy for any Christian to say, "I believe that God created everything," because that is the primary, most fundamental thing that you learn about God when you open the Bible. There are many people I have met over the years who did not grow up in a church or with the Bible. Somewhere along the way, they may have come across one of these books, perhaps a Gideon Bible found in a hotel. They opened it up, and like you do with most books, they started on page one and moved from left to right, going from the beginning of the book to the end. Unless, of course, you are one of those people who cannot stand not knowing the ending and jumps to Revelation first, which is always a problem because it can be so confusing.

But if you start on page one, what is the first thing you read? "In the beginning, God created." Those simple words represent the most basic belief or understanding that Christians have. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This is the fundamental article of Christian belief: that He is the maker of everything. The first thing we learn about God in the Scriptures is that He exists and that He made everything else that exists.

What is interesting here in 2025, living in the culture we do in the Western world, is that this concept—"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"—is a dividing point for many people living in a post-scientific revolution, post-Enlightenment age. I think you know this quite well because you have friends, co-workers, and family members who are not churchgoers.

There are individuals who are not Christians and have a different worldview than you. In our culture, there are essentially two basic worldviews. You either believe in science, which posits that everything came to be through scientific naturalism and random processes over billions of years of evolution, or you are one of those who believes that God created everything. This is the context in our culture today, as we live in a post-scientific revolution era, which began in the 16th and 17th centuries, and after the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Through these major shifts in Western culture and world history, there has been a movement toward empiricism and science. We see the benefits of this shift in the many advancements in medicine, technology, and various other fields that we enjoy today. As a result, we have a great deal of trust in the scientific method and what it can achieve. Therefore, after hundreds of years of progress and the results that have come from it, you are either someone who believes in and affirms what science proposes as the origin of everything, or you are one of those who still believes in the pre-scientific notion that there is a God.

In 2025, these two perspectives are often pitted against each other, as if they are in conflict or at war. However, it is fascinating to examine history over the last 600 years and discover that these views were generally not in conflict. In fact, all of the great names of the scientific revolution—what we might refer to as the fathers or godfathers of science—were theists. They were predominantly Christians who began to discover, through observation and exploration of the cosmos and the world around us, that everything seems to fit together so well and operates in an orderly fashion.

These individuals were amazed at God's power and grandeur in creating such an ordered cosmos. Names like Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Newton, Boyle, and Pascal were all Christians who believed that an awesome God made an orderly universe, and they sought to investigate these wonders as an act of worship.

Into these things, what you see from these individuals is this point: belief in God as Creator is not anti-science. It actually is a worldview that explains why science works. What does that mean? Well, it is God who ordered the cosmos. This ordered cosmos, this orderly universe that we live in, makes science possible. Science depends upon an ordered and orderly universe.

What do I mean? Some of you have studied science. Some of you are even in STEM fields where science is very important. You recognize that based on certain assumptions, you can make a hypothesis. You can say, "This is going to happen if we do this, this, this, and this." Why? Because we live in an ordered and orderly cosmos. You have the rationality to look at all the order and to make certain assumptions. For example, if we combine this chemical with that chemical, we're going to get a specific result because these electrons will join with these electrons, creating a bond at a molecular level. We can determine that because it works over and over again, repeatedly, due to the order and consistency of the universe.

We should be thankful that we live in an ordered and orderly cosmos. Tomorrow, when you do the same thing you did yesterday, something new is not going to happen all of a sudden. You can trust and have faith that it will happen according to the established laws of nature. For the earliest scientists, they believed that God was the one who made this universe, and they trusted in their ability to make suppositions based on what they knew to be the case from this ordered cosmos.

This ordered and orderly cosmos assumes that the world operates according to consistent laws and that our rational minds are capable of understanding those laws and determining truth and knowledge. What is very fascinating is that these assumptions do not arise from naturalism. This is something that a Christian philosopher by the name of Alvin Plantinga discusses in a book he published in 1993 called "Warrant and Proper Function." He basically puts it like this: if your mind is just the byproduct of unguided evolution and your mind is aimed solely at survival, then...

Evolution posits the survival of the fittest. If your mind is based solely on survival rather than truth, then you have no good reason to trust your beliefs, including your belief in silence that it is actually true. Your mind is only geared for survival. This concept is known as the evolutionary argument against naturalism, which has gained a lot of notoriety since it was formulated in 1993.

Belief in a creator was not an obstacle for early rational scientists; rather, it is the foundation of reason. The fact that you have a rational mind capable of reasoning in an ordered cosmos stems from the belief that an orderly God created you in His image to understand these things.

So, what does this have to do with the Nine Creed? It relates to the challenge presented in those opening words: "We believe in one God, the Father, the maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen." This comes directly from Genesis, which states, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

However, there is a challenge with Genesis chapter 1. The God who is revealed in Genesis, and whom we affirm our belief in through the opening words of the Nine Creed, is independent of His creation. He must be, because He made it. He is not inside of it, does not rely upon it, and has no necessity for it. Therefore, He is independent of it, precedes it, and is outside and separate from it.

Because God, as described in Genesis 1 and in the opening words of the Nine Creed, is independent of and separate from His creation, this implies a certain distance. We cannot connect with Him. We are in the box, if you will; the cosmos, the universe, is the box, and we are inside it while He is outside. How can we possibly connect with Him? This is the problem presented in Genesis chapter 1.

This issue became more pronounced in the 17th and 18th centuries during the Enlightenment. The scientific revolution, led by individuals like Kepler and Newton, began to reveal that we live in an ordered and orderly cosmos. They recognized God as the one who established this order.

made all this. But then that inspired a philosophical revolution. The scientific revolution started a philosophical revolution that we refer to as the Enlightenment. There were individuals who are well known in history that emerged during that period of time, such as René Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. They began to think about this: if God is outside of this and all we know is what is in this, including our minds and everything we have, then we believe that there is a God, but there is no way that we can know Him.

That's what René Descartes basically said in Descartes' rationalism. He believed in God, but he stated, "I can never connect with Him." After him came John Locke, who introduced British empiricism. What is empiricism? It is the view that we can study all of the tangible things in the box, but we can't know God because He is outside of the box. Thus, we move from Descartes' rationalism to Locke's empiricism.

Then we encounter David Hume, who brought skepticism into the conversation. He acknowledged, "I know that I exist and I know that this exists, but I can't know God because He is outside of this. Therefore, I just don't think He exists." Do you see how the thought process evolves? Next, we move down the line to Kant's idealism. In each stage, God gets pushed further and further away.

The scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries revealed the magnificent order of the universe. However, as thinkers and philosophers began to contemplate the order of the universe and their ability to understand it, they realized that God is separate from this. They started to express ideas like this: the universe is like a wonderfully designed and architected mechanical clock. It is so orderly that we can predict eclipses hundreds of years in advance. How do we know that? Because everything is moving so perfectly, like a beautiful clock.

If this is a clock, then the maker of it is a clockmaker. However, the clockmaker is independent of it; He is far away from it and removed from it. Thus, theism shifted and evolved through the Enlightenment into what we know as theism today. What is theism? Theism is the view that there is a transcendent God. He is the first cause; He created everything, but He created the clock, wound it up, and then left. He is gone, and we have no connection with Him. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, but He is so distant.

Far away from us, we can never get to Him. We're always disconnected from Him. He's not imminent; He's not here now. He's not in relationship with us. He's not personal. He's not intending anything in our lives.

So, what is the result? Point number three: the rationality God designed into creation became the very tool humans used to reason God away. This is highlighted beautifully in a book that came out decades ago, in either the late 70s or early 80s, by a philosopher and Christian author named James Sire. I highly recommend this book to you if you're interested in these kinds of things. James Sire wrote a book called "The Universe Next Door," and it's in its sixth edition at this point.

In his book, "The Universe Next Door," he charts the progress from theism, which was dominant in the Western world after the move of Christianity from the first century until the 14th century. For 1,400 years, the dominant view was theism. However, through various developments, such as the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, things started to shift toward deism. God is far away. Yes, we believe in God, but we can't connect with Him.

Theism gave rise to naturalism. Well, maybe there is not a God; it's just that everything here exists. This is all we know for sure: that this exists. We can't know if He exists because we just can't know. This leads to naturalism, which then morphed into existentialism. If naturalism is true, then what are we here for?

Well, just the same thing that Solomon said 3,000 years ago in Ecclesiastes: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." This is existentialism. The French understood French existentialism, and it has influenced every single one of you if you went to university within the last 50 years. That's at the core of it.

But that existentialism moved toward nihilism—a nihilism that says, "Well, there's no point to anything." Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. What's the point? What's the value? What's the worth of anything in life at all? Then you get to thinkers like Albert Camus. What did Camus say? You might as well just kill yourself. That's literally what his book says. Read it: "The Myth of Sisyphus." Actually, don't read it if you're even marginally...

Depressed, because it's just horrible. I've read it, and maybe I don't recommend it. Don't read that one. It's another one of those weird French guys that get us into all kinds of trouble. They make great food, but man, their thinking is flawed.

Then it morphs from deism to naturalism, to nihilism, existentialism, and postmodernism, which is where we live today. We just can't know anything; everything's subjective. That's the world of our day. So, where are we in 2025? I would suggest to you that we're pretty lost.

Scientific naturalism was thought to have discovered it all for several centuries. At the end of the 19th century, the prevailing thought was that we were going to build utopia. However, those thoughts were shattered in the first half of the 20th century through two world wars. The scientific utopia that was expected did not materialize. Our culture now finds itself wrestling with existential questions of meaning—a crisis of meaning.

In 2025, this is the reality. We are living in the midst of a crisis of meaning, a crisis of identity, a crisis of morality, a crisis of purpose, and a crisis of destiny. I would say to those who find themselves lost in their way, who have forgotten these truths, forgotten who made them and what they were made for, I want to bring you back to these six very important words: "Through him all things were made."

Why are those words so important? They say nothing different than we believe in one God, the Father, the maker of heaven and earth. At its core, it says nothing different, but it conveys something uniquely important.

What's the significance of this? Now, listen, I'm going to give you a point here in just a second, and it's going to sound like gibberish. It may seem completely opaque, like that's not helpful. But point number four, I'm going to explain it. Jesus imitatizes the transcendent. Go with me here; I'm going to explain it because this is really important.

The Bible begins, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

The God of Genesis 1, the God of the opening words of the Nicene Creed, "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen," is far away. I can't connect with Him. Because I can't connect with Him and He exists outside the box, all I can do is be consciously aware of myself and this empirical stuff. I'm not even sure that He exists. I'm being told by the Bible that He exists, but I don't know that. So, He feels distant, and the inevitable result is dismay. Okay, He exists, but what does that mean to me? He is not involved in my life.

Then we get to the Gospels, specifically John chapter 1. We read these words in the opening of John chapter 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Word is personified as "Him." He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through Him. Those words—"through Him all things were made"—are exactly the same. Without Him, nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and that life was the light or the desire of men. That light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

We don't understand it, right? God exists, but we can't comprehend Him because He is far away. That's exactly what John 1 is saying. It conveys the same message as Genesis 1, but slightly differently. We remain in this place of not comprehending God because we are in the dark, and He is off in the distance. We cannot connect with Him, and we have this deep issue. There is a transcendent God in Genesis chapter 1. He transcends us; He transcends time and space. He is far removed from us and beyond our comprehension.

Yet, we are conscious of something. There is something about our own consciousness, our awareness of ourselves and this world. Our awareness of morality—what is true, good, just, right, and beautiful—implies that there is someone overseeing it all. This is exactly what the psalmists observe in Psalm 19: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the earth shows forth His handiwork. Day unto day they utter speech, and night unto night they reveal knowledge." There is no speech or language...

Where their voice is not heard, it doesn't matter what language you speak—English, Mandarin, or whatever. We can all see creation. We have our conscious awareness of ourselves and this world, and we recognize that existence requires a cause. Everything that exists has a cause. Therefore, I exist, and I must have a cause. What's the cause? The heavens declare the glory of God.

Paul observed the same thing in Romans chapter 1. For since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes—though I can't see Him, as He is outside of the cosmos—are clearly seen and understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead. So, we are without excuse.

It's not just creation and my awareness of it, but also my awareness of a conscience that recognizes right and wrong. Have you ever thought to yourself that a person should not have said something? I cannot believe that person did that. Has anyone ever had that thought? Come on, be honest. The second you say they should not have done something, Paul tells us in Romans chapter 2 that when you judge someone, you indicate that there is an objective value of judgment.

You've made a statement that there is a right and a wrong. When you say that person lied to me, you're asserting that there is something true and something false. When you're disgusted by something and say that it is gross, that implies that there is something objectively beautiful and something objectively disgusting. This awareness, called your conscience, indicates that there is a moral lawgiver who sets the objective standards of truth, goodness, and beauty.

That God exists is what Thomas Aquinas would refer to, or even Aristotle, who would say, the unmoved mover. Who is this one that sets these things into place? We see His fingerprints, shall we say, in our consciousness, our awareness of ourselves and this world. We see His fingerprints in the creation of this world. We see His fingerprints in our conscience.

But when we think deeply on these things, the inevitable outcome is dismay. I can't connect with Him; He's too far removed.

I'm in the dark, and I cannot comprehend the light until this verse: John chapter 1, verse 14. The Word, who we were introduced to in verse 1, became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld the incomprehensible; we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

What is meant when I throw out these big words like "Jesus imitatizes the transcendent"? First, we need to define "imminotize." Notice the connection between "imminotize" and "Emmanuel." Emmanuel means "God with us." He imminotizes the transcendent. God is far and removed from us; I can't connect with Him. Jesus brings God down to us.

To imminotize is to bring from the realm of the abstract, from the distant, from the transcendent, into the realm of the here and now, the tangible and the present. So we say Jesus imminotizes the transcendent. He brings the infinite, transcendent God into direct connection with the world, a world that could not comprehend the light. Now we are able to behold the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He is God with us.

You see, God created you and me to live in connection with Him. We talk about that a lot here at Cross Connection Church: life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. However, we've been separated from God since Genesis chapter 3 through rebellion and sin. Jesus brings God's presence near to us. He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God. He is begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.

And why did He come? We will get into that in the next couple of weeks as we continue through the creed. He came to die for our sins, to deal with that which separates us. He can bring the presence of the transcendent God near because He is fully God, clothed in human flesh. He is the fullness of deity revealed, so that in Him we can behold the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John chapter 1, verses 1-5, establishes that the Word was active in creation. This is the same God who...

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And God said, "Let there be light." This is the Word, the logos. Jesus, the Word of God, was there at the beginning.

Then, as we read in Genesis 1:26, God said, "Let us make man in our image and our likeness." Who is the "us" and the "our"? God is communicating within the triune community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This same one, who is the "our" and "us" of Genesis 1:26, is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. In Him, we recognize the God revealed in general revelation, in creation, consciousness, and conscience. He is the God who has come down to us.

Paul observed this in Colossians 1. He writes that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him, all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him, all things consist. He is the creator and the sustainer of everything.

Christ Jesus, our Lord, as the creed says, is the creator God with us. He reveals God, imitates the transcendent, and images the invisible. The very one through whom and for whom all things were created, the one who is before all things and in whom all things consist, has come near to us in the incarnation. So much so that Jesus could say to His followers, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father."

What does this mean for us? It means that the nihilistic existential dread of a postmodern naturalistic culture finds its solution to the great problem.

In Christ Jesus, point number five, and I'll try to wrap it up. Jesus, as He brings transcendence near, brings meaning, purpose, and hope to everything. The meaninglessness and existential dread that people are experiencing in our culture, which has put all of its faith and trust in naturalism and scientism, should not be surprising to us. In fact, I would say it would be more surprising if a person who buys into the modern narrative of the Western world were not depressed.

Why? Because the great questions that people wrestle with—questions of identity, origin, purpose, morality, and destiny—are profound. These great questions that we wrestle with include: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going after this? What is good, true, right, wrong, and beautiful?

How does our culture answer them today? On the question of identity and origin, the answer given to us by our culture is that you are nothing more than an animal, maybe the highest form of animal. You were produced by billions of years of random chance, mutation, and unguided evolutionary processes. Someday, you will be outdone by a greater species that will evolve from you, and probably your species will go extinct. That's the story.

How do we answer the question of purpose? Well, your only ultimate purpose, you animal, is to survive. Survival of the fittest. Look at you fit people in Southern California; you're surviving quite well. Your only ultimate purpose is to survive, and you need to pass along your genetic material to the next generation so that maybe the species can survive beyond you. That's it.

As for destiny, how does our culture answer it? When you die, you will merely cease to exist. The material that is your body will be reabsorbed into the matter of the earth.

And morality? There is no ultimate value or objective measure of truth, goodness, or beauty.

Other than what you make for yourself, our culture tells you this: I hate to break it to you, but in spite of your best efforts to continue to perpetuate the species, it's highly likely that global warming will kill you in 12 years. Everything will cease to exist, and if that doesn't happen, then we're going to have a species-ending cosmic event, like an asteroid hitting the Earth, and everything will be destroyed. Sorry. Is there any wonder why we're living through a crisis of meaning?

Like I said, I'd be more surprised if you weren't depressed, having been told that since your youth. Why do we have so many kids struggling with cutting themselves? They are trying to find some sort of measure of whether or not they exist. Pain seems to be the only indication of something that's real. It's the least surprising outcome that in late-stage modernity, which we're living through, we are experiencing a collective psychosis—a collapse of all the structures of meaning and purpose.

I was listening to a conversation this last week with a cognitive scientist and philosopher by the name of John Verviki. He is a very interesting character. John Verviki was interviewing a woman called Britt Hartley. This is what the description of the conversation said about Britt Hartley's credentials: Britt Hartley is a certified spiritual director, meditation teacher, and leading voice in secular spirituality, specializing in religious trauma deconstruction and nihilism recovery. That's a job in 2025. You can make good money helping people process their nihilism.

Is it possible that our modern Western worldview is pathological? It makes you sick. Through Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, all things remain. It means more than you think it means. It means that God is not distant. He's not detached, disengaged, dispassionate, or disinterested. It means that He actually is interested. He made you for a purpose. He is personal. He's engaged with your life in Christ Jesus. He is near and compassionate. He's the Creator who came down to us to reveal Himself.

Us, the light, the love, the grace, the truth, the joy, the peace, and the hope of God for you and me. In Him, we find meaning, purpose, and hope—the hope that this world desperately needs. This is why He would say, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." This is why He says, "I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him, and he with me."

You see, God wants to have a relationship with you. This is why it has been said for so long that Christianity is not a religion; it is a relationship. Yes, it is a statement of things we believe. We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, the maker of all things seen and unseen. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten of God, full God of God, light of light, fully God. We believe that in Him all things were made.

But we believe these things because He came to us to deal with the problem that separates us: sin and death, so that we might have a relationship with Him. He says, "I want to know you and for you to know me, and in Christ, you can." He is not distant; He is here. He embodies the transcendent.

Would you stand with me as we close in prayer? God, I thank you for these things that seem so simple on the surface, but they are profound. You desire to have a relationship with us. You want us to know You as we are known. You made us for this purpose, and You invite us to come in. Or, You say, "Maybe just invite me to come in."

God, I pray that as we open our hearts to You, we would introduce You to others because You have set us to be ambassadors of Your good word and of Your gospel. Help us to do that today and this week. Help us to connect with You and bring others into connection with You as well. For we ask this in Jesus' name. And all those agreed said, "Amen." Amen.