Theory of Everything

2021.1.3. Yonsei University Church, Dae Sung Lee

Second Sunday after Christmas, New Year Sunday

Jeremiah 31:10-14

Ephesians 1:3-14

John 1:1-14

Today is the second Sunday after Christmas and the first Sunday to start the New Year. Today, which has a special meaning, I pray that God will fill you with the riches of His grace, and I hope that God will bless you with new and abundant blessings throughout the year.

God's plan of salvation in Jeremiah

Today’s scripture we just read today are enormous in scale. The book of Jeremiah reveals that Israel, now in captivity, will soon return as they will be liberated, and this return is not only related to one nation of Israel, but a world historical event. Verse 10 says, "All nations, listen to the words of the Lord, and tell these words to the people of the distant coast", emphasizing that the return of the Israelites to their hometowns is a world historic event. The nations say that they must participate, prepare, and proclaim for God's plan of salvation. It is a great pleasure for the Israelites to return from captivity and return to their original lives. Today’s scriture says that it is like a shepherd looking for his flock, and like his father loving his children. It is said that God rescued the Israelites from captivity so that they can now live a happy and contented life. God's plan is a world historical event when viewed in the breadth and depth, and at its enormous scale, but it shows an image of loving and welcoming the Israelites in a delicate manner like a father and a shepherd. From that point of view, both macroscopically and microscopically, we come to realize that God's plan of salvation is complete.

2. God's plan of salvation appeared in Ephesians

Even in the epistle we read today, God's plan of salvation is described on a fairly large scale. First of all, in time, God's plan of salvation began before creation. In verse 4, it reads, "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." It is a very mysterious and difficult word for us. He says that He chose us, loved us, saved us before creation. This can be called predestination in difficult theological terms. However, it is a subject too large to be explored theologically as we call it too doctrinally predestination. Beyond the scope of our understanding, God is interested in, loves, and does his best to save us as we are breathing now. And He says that He chose us before the creation of the world. What projects could be bigger than this in the world? I am amazed at how great the scale of God's salvation plan started before creation.

In the Old Testament, if the object of salvation was a child of God, a descendant of Abraham, or the nation of Israel, now the object of salvation has been expanded to a wider range. Beyond the relationship of lineage, people all over the world have become objects of God's salvation. Now, everyone in the world has become God's adopted sons, heirs of God, and protagonists in God's salvation project. There is a good description of God's project of salvation on a grand scale in Ephesians, which I think is the phrase “unification in Christ”. We need to think deeply about the meaning that everything is unified in Christ. If we look at verse 8, God has given us wisdom so that we can understand God's mysterious will of salvation. In other words, God gave us a sign. God has taught us to know this amazing God's plan, which we cannot grasp, understand, or believe with human wisdom. And the gist of the plan, as we can see in verse 10, is, " to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ." Christ becomes the head and unifies, and there is nothing that is not included in this unification. A complete unification that encompasses and embraces everything in the world. A perfect unification, a perfect completion, is achieved in Christ that can no longer think of anything greater, and nothing can be left out of it. And within these salvation projects, we are said to be the heirs of God. It would be impossible for us to fully understand this amazing project, the plan of the salvation of the great God. But what we have to think about in our hearts is that God's amazing salvation beyond our imagination is protecting us.

Verse 12 tells us what a Christian is. It is Christians who first believed in Christ, the ruler of this wonderful plan, and who had hope in Christ, and enjoyed such privileges. It is said that because we first know Christ, believe in Christ, and have hope in Christ, we will live a life that glorifies God through it. And it is said that the Holy Spirit helps us, and the Holy Spirit guarantees this faith.

3. God's plan of salvation in the Gospel of John

The Gospel of John explains God's plan of salvation on a larger scale than Ephesians. It is written in John 1:1. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The word here is logos in Greek. Before the whole world began, there was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God. Look at verse 3. “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

This word (Logos) has existed since the beginning of time, is the subject of creation, the source of creation, and the principle of creation. In other words, he is the one who gives the answer to understand everything that exists. Much is inexplicable, mysterious and incomprehensible in this world. There are so many things that we wrestle with the world's many problems, struggle to solve, but can't find an answer, and that's what the Logos explains about everything that exists in this world, the direction of everything.

Furthermore, if you look at verse 4, it says that in the Logos we get life. Logos is the source of our life, and without Logos we have no real life. And he said that life is the light of man. The essence of life found in Logos is that it is light. It is not living in darkness, concealment, falsehood, deception, oppression, and despair, but living in light, openness, truth, truth, liberation, and hope is the attribute of life.

In the words of the Gospel of John read today, it is said that the whole world was created by Logos, the light, and created to enjoy life, but somehow, people living in this world now live in darkness. Maybe it's how each of us lives. In particular, I don't know if we have come to realize that all of us humanity are living in darkness as we live through 2020. The Bible tells us that the Logos, who created the whole world into this darkness, shines with light. It is said that the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.(5)

In this world, however, there are many people who fear it, do not accept it, and live avoiding it. However, the Bible says that those who recognized the light and received it were given the privilege of becoming children of God. The last verse of today’s scripture we read today says: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

It means that the word became flesh, that it was glorious and full of grace and truth, but if we analyze this passage carefully, there is a part that does not fit our common sense. When the word becomes flesh, it would be normal for the original glory to fade or decrease due to the body, but there is no such expression at all. The word has become flesh, and the glory has become more glorious. The body also means our body and flesh, but it can be seen as a symbol of the world of matter in a broader sense. The fact that Logos, who created the whole world, has come to this world of matter, our body, that the glory is not lost, diminished, damaged, and filled with grace and truth in our lives is mysterious, but it is a very important key to understanding the meaning of our lives. 1 Timothy 4:4,5 says, " For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving."

The glory we see through Logos, which is precious and grateful to us, is not the glory that appears when we deny our humble bodies, the things we touch all the time, but with him, the glory that is revealed in them. It is a great blessing that the word has become a body, but it is a great blessing for us to show and maintain the glory of God's amazing Logos in the body. Participating in this grace and truth of God is the proper attitude of our lives saved.

4. Theory of Everything

Today's sermon is titled "Theory of Everything." There have been many attempts in history to find the theory of everything. Humans do not know so much in the life of this world that he has done a lot of exploration of how to find one theory that can explain the operation of everything in this world. Prior to the development of science, many philosophers explored what constitutes all things. Some people thought water, numbers, several elements, ying and yang were the answer. Many people have tried to find a principle that can explain the whole world. Due to the advent of modern science, many people believe that natural science is the theory of everything. Even today, many people think that natural science can explain everything in this world. I think science is the theory of everything. Edward Wilson made a lot of repercussions in the academic world through the concept of consilience. He said that everything we can experience and observe in this world (not only the material world, but also culture, religion, art, politics, and everything else) is analyzed in a more fundamental and small dimension, so that reduction is a over and over again, everything in this world can be explained by the most basic laws of physics. He says he found a master algorithm that can explain everything, a formula that can explain everything.

But we have to admit that science alone cannot explain everything in this world, especially all human experiences. We try to find a principle that can explain everything, but we live in despair, anxiety, and feeling empty, realizing that it cannot explain everything. Everyone in the world needs a theory that explains everything in the world, depending on what they understand, and the way they live their lives depends on how confident they are.

I have been watching a movie called Tenet these days. I'm saying, "I have been watching" because I saw it once and I did not understand it and keep looking at it. It was produced by director Christopher Nolan, and the movie itself is very hard to understand. The movie has a worldview that the movie is choosing. The worldview may be different from the world we live in, but it should be applied consistently at least in the movie. If you understand the principle of penetrating the entire movie, you understand the movie, but if you don't understand the theory that explains the scene in the movie, you can't understand it even if you watch it a few times. The film contains theories and concepts of various physics. The concept of entropy law, anti-matter, multiverse, free will, causal theory, etc. is included, and the concept of Inversion, which means changing the direction of time, is also introduced. The film director leads the story of the movie by explaining all these things harmoniously, and the people who only watched the movie once cannot understand the theory because it is not understood. How easy is it to find out how we understand everything about the life we live in, the universe we belong to without a big picture, a theory that explains the whole thing? No matter how hard scientists try and accumulate wisdom for a long time, there are so many mysteries we can't understand. Can we find a theory that explains everything in every corner of the universe, every corner of the micro world? Can we really find the theory of everything?

The universe in which we live is said to be 13.7 billion years old. We can say that the size of the universe is 13.7 billion light years. And the age and size of the universe keeps growing. Each human being in this universe is like a beauty. Indeed, where can we find the key, the theory that can explain the whole universe and the entire history?

5. The theory of everything based on the Bible

The scripture we read today tells us that the key is in the Word of God. The book of Ephesians speaks about God's salvation plan from the beginning to the moment when history is completed, and the history of Logos, who creates and operates the whole world as shown in John 1.

Looking at John 1, which we read today, God tells us the theory of everything in a very easy and simple way that even children can understand. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and in the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was God. There is life and light in the Word. We are living in the dark for a moment now, but the light has come to us. When we receive that light, we enjoy life, live in the light, and enjoy the privilege of becoming children of God. This life, living as a child of God, is a salvation plan established by God from the beginning. And the Bible teaches us that the One who teaches, enlightens, witnesses, and guarantees all this is Jesus Christ, who came to us in the fleshly Word, the image of the baby Jesus.

2021 New Year has come to us. The world we live in is full of things that are so confusing and incomprehensible. What we think we know is actually incomplete and inadequate, like touching an elephant's leg. As we live in a world where many challenges and confusion await us, we must realize that the theory that can explain everything is the amazing salvation of God through Jesus Christ. And I sincerely hope that we will become brothers and sisters who live a year with more confidence in their hearts.

* Devotional Prayer

God, who has perfect plans for all things in the universe and for all the peoples of the world, everything is mysterious in the eye of life, and we are going to use God's word to guide our way to a future full of mystery and respect. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen