Well, thank you so much for having me here and Fiona and Zach.
We're so blessed to be here.
It's such a privilege to speak at Watermark.
I've heard so many amazing things about your church and about your community
and just being here this morning, it's already clear that all of those wonderful things are true.
It's always a real privilege as a speaker to speak with one of these headset mics.
They used to be called Madonna mics, now they're called Brittany mics.
And the first time I spoke on one of these, I was in Australia
and I was speaking to the pastor of the inviting church and he had never met me before.
And he said, oh, we've got this Madonna mic, it's new, we've got a new sound system, it's going to be great.
And I'm like, oh, that sounds good.
And he said, yeah, it's really good.
They won't even be able to tell you're wearing it, it's skin coloured.
And I said, that's awesome, man, but it's probably not skin coloured.
And he said, no, no, no, it's skin coloured.
And so this went on back and forth for a while.
He must have thought I was crazy.
Anyway, so I just left it and when he saw me, he got a bit surprised.
But anyway, it's great to be speaking with a skin coloured Brittany mic, even though you can see it.
Let me just open briefly in prayer.
Heavenly Father, we just commit this time to you, Lord.
And I just pray that you would increase, that we would all decrease,
and that you would speak to each of us into our minds and into our hearts.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
How many of you have either read or watched the movie of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?
Okay, most people.
For those of you that haven't, I'll give you a bit of context, but you don't really need the context to understand this part of the story.
There's a part in the beginning of the story that's often forgotten.
So even those of you that are used to the story or know it well may well have forgotten this,
where Edmund, one of the children, the four children, it's about a family of four children,
and they've just come into Narnia.
And they've just basically been briefed by this family of beavers about the evil white witch,
about a curse that's kind of over the entire land,
and about this great lion, Aslan, who was kind of the creator of all of Narnia,
and he's the good king, the rightful king, the rightful ruler of Narnia.
But everyone's waiting for him to come back and save all of the animals and the good people of Narnia.
But Edmund, while this is happening, he escapes and he betrays his brother and his two sisters
and all of the good people of Narnia, and he decides to go to the castle of the white witch.
He's met the white witch before.
He thinks she's a better bet than this lion Aslan that everyone's talking about.
He's had an encounter with her.
He sees her power.
It's all winter.
The whole place is covered with snow.
So he makes his way to the castle of the white witch.
He makes a judgment based on his own perception and his own experience.
And when he gets to the castle of the white witch, he sees a stone lion.
Now, this white witch can turn animals into stone.
So he assumes that this lion is Aslan, is the great Aslan that the good Narnians have been talking about.
And so he laughed and he kind of ridicules it and says,
Ah, see, this great Aslan's already been defeated, already been turned into stone by the white witch.
Simple part of the story, easily forgettable, not particularly interesting or exciting.
And yet when you look a little deeper at what Edmund did, and when you look at it in the context of what was just read,
about the angel coming to the Virgin Mary, telling her about something impossible that was going to happen,
we see some interesting parallels.
We see some interesting challenges.
We see some interesting questions.
Because Edmund, just like Mary, was presented with supernatural power, with something that seemed impossible,
with something based on the circumstances that didn't seem could logically and reasonably happen.
And yet he and Mary reacted and responded in different ways.
And the two big mistakes that Edmund made in kind of rejecting Aslan and ignoring the possibility of what he considered impossible,
was that he overestimated himself and he underestimated Aslan.
He overestimated himself and he underestimated Aslan.
And that, at its simplest level, is what we are all at risk of doing as people living in the 21st century,
when we are presented with the supernatural power of God, this God of the impossible,
this God of things beyond our imagination and beyond our understanding.
And any time we either reject God entirely or we don't embrace him and submit to him entirely
in the way that he deserves to be embraced and submitted to,
we're doing one of those two things in some combination.
At some level, we are overestimating ourselves and at some level, we're underestimating him.
And his power.
So those are the two things I want to speak about this morning.
Overestimating ourselves and underestimating God.
And what flows from that?
What are the consequences?
What are the implications?
And how reasonable is it to be doing that when we actually look more closely at the evidence,
at ourselves, at the human heart, at our circumstances?
So overestimating ourselves.
It's interesting that Mary never overestimated herself.
She didn't make this mistake that Edmund made.
In fact, she was kind of confused and troubled as to why an angel would come to her.
In this obscure village, in this obscure town, this kind of unknown, single, engaged woman.
She didn't have that sense of herself, that sense of her own status,
that aggrandized view of herself.
So when the angel came to her, she was in a much better place to listen and absorb and to process what the angel was saying,
purely in the context of the value of what was being said.
Whereas Edmund took what was said about Aslan, and he put it in the context of his sense of self,
about how much he thought of himself, about his self-esteem and his ego.
And that's why it kind of shot through.
It didn't get processed in the right way.
So there were some things that Mary was stressed about and concerned about.
And we can see that, in a sense, that was reasonable.
She was stressed about the cultural consequences and the kind of logistical significance of what this angel was saying.
She's a virgin.
She's engaged to someone.
And now she's going to be pregnant.
Clearly, this is going to cause problems at that time.
And so while she doesn't reject straight out what the angel is saying, she's got serious concerns and she's anxious.
So when presented with the supernatural power of God, when presented with something impossible,
Mary's not putting herself above that.
She's not rejecting it because of who she is.
But she's understandably, in my view, concerned and is perceiving it in the context in which she is.
Surely that's something that we can all be okay with doing.
When God presents us with challenges, when God presents us with opportunities, when God presents us with his supernatural power that he wants to deploy in our lives,
while we shouldn't be subverting it to our own ego and our own sense of who we are and our power,
it's okay for us to understand it and process it in the context of our circumstances, just like Mary did.
The problem that Edmund had was he made a judgment about Aslan and chose to reject Aslan based on what he thought was possible.
And this is an interesting thing about the word impossible, isn't it?
We say it as an objective statement.
When someone says something's impossible, they're saying that something cannot happen, full stop.
But really, when we look at it linguistically, what they're only qualified to say is that I'm of the view that this cannot happen based on the information I have,
under the circumstances I am in, based on the perception that I have.
As a lawyer, that's how you would take apart a claim of a witness that said, this is impossible.
And so whenever we think that things are impossible, when our hearts tell us they're impossible,
when our colleagues tell us they're impossible, when our circumstances tell us they're impossible,
we should remember that it's only based on our perception, it's only based on the information that we have.
And we do this, I think, both individually, whether we're Christians or we're not,
wherever you are with God today, whether you've been a member of this church since the day it was planted,
whether you're here for the first time, whether you've been walking with Jesus,
whether you're thinking about it, whether you've been dragged along here for some other reason,
I think this can speak to all of us in a very similar way,
because we all have that instinct to rely on ourselves and our own perception and our own understanding,
and then put God in a box in accordance with that.
And this is kind of the story of humankind, how we've deified human progress and human achievement.
Increasingly, we build kind of monuments to ourselves.
We invent new things.
We, you know, the technology and the advancement, and we improve our quality of life,
and our smartphones got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller,
and then the screens got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger,
and then it all got more and more and more powerful.
And all of these achievements of humankind are impressive on any measure.
When we look at what we've done over the last X thousand years, it is impressive.
You know, there's a law that was coined, it's actually just an observation,
coined by one of the former CEOs of the Intel Corporation called Moore's Law.
Many of you will have heard of this, which kind of summarises human progress in a pretty accurate way.
Moore's Law just was simply the observation that the number of transistors on an integrated computer circuit,
generally speaking, tend to double every two years.
Technology enables the number of transistors on an integrated circuit to double every two years.
And when you model that, it's an exponential increase, because you're doubling on doubling on doubling.
It's compounding.
And we see that.
We see from just over a hundred years ago, where so many people,
in fact, the vast majority of humankind was saying that flight for human beings is impossible.
Human beings will never fly to the point now where people are flying to another country to have breakfast and then flying back.
117 years later.
So there's something in Moore's Law, and there's something in human progress and achievement.
The problem is we take all of that, and we try to draw and build our identity, our sense of self, on all of those things.
We see the great progress.
We see the great advancement.
And we think because of that, we are all there is.
We are all that matters.
And we look inside ourselves for what's important.
We look inside ourselves for fulfillment.
We look inside ourselves for identity.
The psychologists call it self-actualization.
The sociologists might call it self-sufficiency or self-aggrandizement.
It's basically just people trying to get by on their own.
And that's what the world out there is doing.
It's trying to get by on its own.
It's what the world teaches.
In fact, even the other world views, whether it's atheism or Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam or anything else, it all requires you to do something.
To self-actualize, to bring about something through what you can do.
Self-empowerment.
The entire self-help industry.
It's worth something like $11 billion a year globally with books like The Present and Eat, Pray, Love and the movies and all of this stuff.
It's all about digging deep inside yourself.
Right from The Wizard of Oz all those years ago.
The whole thing is about looking inside yourself for what you need to be fulfilled.
Look inside yourself for what you need to be happy.
And so when we look at all of these different systems of thinking and ways of thinking, it's almost as if all of humankind and life is like a jungle.
And we're all trying to negotiate our way through this jungle.
We're trying to punch our way through it.
And different people are offering different ways through the jungle.
Some people are saying, you don't need to cut anything, you just swing and you work on your agility and you stretch and you bend and you get fit enough to negotiate through the jungle.
Other people are like, no, no, just get a chainsaw and hack your way through the jungle.
Some people are like, look, we don't have chainsaws but we've got machetes to get through the jungle.
And then different people are teaching different ways of cutting and different ways of using the chainsaws and the machetes.
Some people just want to bring forklifts and boulders and just barnstorm their way through the jungle.
But everyone's trying to negotiate their way through the jungle using their own strength, using their own systems.
And it all comes down to an overestimation of ourselves and what we are capable of.
Because when we look at the stats, humankind is more educated, is more wealthy, is more technologically advanced, is more knowledgeable, is supposed to be more politically and philosophically enlightened than we've ever been before.
And yet all of the statistics tell a different story.
Mental illness at an all-time high.
Homicide rates at an all-time high.
Suicide rates at an all-time high.
Divorce rates at an all-time high.
Humankind is out there more advanced than ever.
Broken minds, broken bodies, broken spirits.
All because we're overestimating ourselves.
So that's one problem.
The other problem or the other challenge, and certainly for us, regardless of where we are with God, the other risk is underestimating God.
And this can be just as bad.
And Edmund clearly did this.
He underestimated Aslan and went to the White Witch.
But even Mary at first, there's some evidence in the Scripture to suggest that she had a little double take on what the angel was saying.
And again, we can forgive her for that.
It kind of seems reasonable because the angel said she's going to be pregnant and she's like, but I'm a virgin.
And based on the information she had, virgins don't get pregnant.
Based on the information we still have, virgins don't get pregnant.
That's a reasonable response.
And so at first, even she questions what the angel is saying.
She questions it based on what she thought was possible.
Today, when we are presented with the supernatural power of God, when we are presented with situations that seem impossible,
and then we're presented with what Christians call a God of the impossible to overcome those situations,
the reason we reject the supernatural power of God, or the reason we reject God at all on any level,
whether we're Christians or we're not,
generally comes down to one of two categories of error, or two reactions that we have
to this claim that God is capable of the supernatural, or that God can do the impossible.
The first is, for some, and as an apologist, I see a lot of this out there,
is quite simply that people think that this God that we speak of seems impossible to believe in in the first place.
This all seems impossible.
This supernatural God, all of these miracles, it all seems unbelievable.
You want us to throw out the laws of science, you want us to throw out the laws of nature,
you want us to throw out the principles of logic, and they mash it all together and say,
this just can't be, it's impossible, it can't happen.
It's interesting, though, because those kind of reactions and those kinds of summarial statements,
they work fine if you just say them quickly like that.
But once you get them in, at least notionally, a courtroom of the mind,
or a courtroom of debate, or a courtroom of dialogue,
and you look deeper into what people who reject the existence of God,
or the truth of the Christian message, or the gospel of Jesus Christ,
or the reliability of the scriptures,
when you start taking things apart more carefully,
we see holes start to appear in these critiques very, very quickly.
And this is a sermon I'm giving on a particular passage,
so unfortunately I don't have time to go into all of those arguments.
Many of you will know them, there are books out there on them,
and I'm sure many of you have prayed on these and thought on these before.
But just one example, on the virgin birth alone,
a lot of the new atheists ridicule and mock the entire Christian faith,
and they centre it, they centre their disbelief on the impossibility of the virgin birth.
They make the reasonable claim that virgins don't get pregnant,
and they say, therefore, all of Christianity is false.
Interestingly, though, when you talk about the origins of life,
because if you reject Christianity outright,
and that's everyone's right and prerogative,
if you choose to reject Christianity outright,
you still have to explain a lot of things that any worldview has to explain.
The origins of life, the source of meaning, the source of human dignity,
the categories of purpose, destiny, morality, and so forth.
And so if you reject the virgin birth outright,
you still have to explain somehow the origins of human life,
if you're rejecting the virgin birth and through that Christianity and creation.
And here's how it's explained.
This is actually the best explanation from new atheism that I could find.
This guy's at least honest about how it happened.
Peter Singer, he says,
First they claim, of course, that there's just nothing but a primeval soup,
so there's no life out there, there's just kind of random molecules and compounds.
And then Peter Singer says this,
We can assume that somehow in the primeval soup,
we got collections of molecules that became self-replicating.
And I don't think we need any miraculous or mysterious explanation beyond that.
I'll read the first line again.
We can assume that somehow in the primeval soup,
we got collections of molecules that became self-replicating.
Now, I'm from the subcontinent.
It's an Eastern culture.
I have a lot of cousins.
And I'm from an Eastern culture.
We've been very blessed.
Almost half of my cousins are doctors.
I was the failure that became a lawyer.
And then became an apologist and just confused the whole system.
But they tell me, reliably, when I ask them,
when Fiona became pregnant,
and we were early in the pregnancy with Zach,
and I asked them,
How does this even work?
How does a new life grow inside someone?
And the miraculous aspect of it aside,
what they tell me,
my cousins,
and medical science,
is that basically,
that's how it starts.
It's when cells self-replicate.
So what Peter Singer is effectively arguing for
is a virgin birth.
To support atheism.
So in the end,
and this is just one tiny example
in one category of critique that we see
of belief in God and the Christian faith,
all Christians and all atheists out there
are believing in a virgin birth of some type.
The question is,
which virgin birth are you believing in?
This is just one example
that I chose
because I'm speaking from this passage.
There are countless, countless others
for every critique
you could possibly think of.
The only way
you can reasonably say,
using the principles of logic and philosophy
and law and evidence,
the only way you can reasonably argue
that miracles,
that the virgin birth
and other miracles,
are impossible,
is to prove,
deductively,
that God
is impossible
or God does not exist.
That's the only way
because if God exists,
then miracles are really
no big deal at all.
No big deal at all.
If God exists,
then it's like saying
banana trees exist,
therefore the existence of bananas
is not really a big surprise.
If God exists,
the virgin birth
is barely a miracle.
It's just a flick of the wrist
if God exists.
The only way of saying
that miracles are impossible
or the virgin birth
was impossible
is to prove
that there's no God.
Now here's an interesting thing
with proving
a negative assertion,
proving that there is no God.
You actually need
complete knowledge
to do it.
You need to have knowledge
of everything
across the universe
to know that there is no God.
If you want to tell me
that bananas don't exist,
you have to show me
all of the fruit
in the universe
and show me
that there are no bananas there.
It's a very difficult thing to do
to deductively prove a negative.
That's why
even the honest
and smart
new atheists
and atheists,
they will say
it's very unlikely
God exists
or he probably doesn't exist
or we don't have enough evidence
that he exists.
It takes a very
bad philosopher
to say that God
definitely does not exist.
They can't disprove it.
Now Yuri Gagarin
was the first
human being in space,
Russian cosmonaut
earlier in the 20th century.
He got up there
and obviously
a known atheist
and probably running
some propaganda
for the government
that sent him there too
and he said,
I've been up to the heavens,
I've been out into space
and I can assure
everyone on earth
that God does not exist.
I've been up to the heavens
and I had a look
and God does not exist.
And C.S. Lewis responded
by saying,
for Yuri Gagarin
to go into space
and claim that God
does not exist
because he couldn't
find him there
is as ridiculous
as Hamlet
or Macbeth
going into their attic
and claiming
that William Shakespeare
doesn't exist
because they couldn't
find him
in their attic.
We see the ridiculousness
of this, right?
The only way
that Hamlet
would know
that William Shakespeare
existed
is if William Shakespeare
wrote himself
into the story,
Hamlet.
The only way
Hamlet would know
about William Shakespeare,
would be able to meet him,
would be able to even know
of his existence,
is if Shakespeare
wrote himself
into the story.
Isn't it interesting
that's exactly
what this God did?
Wrote himself
into the story.
Gave people a way
of not only knowing
that he existed,
but of knowing him
personally,
up close and personal,
as a person.
So for some people
this God
just seems too impossible
to believe in
and we've already seen
the difficulties
with that.
For other people
it's just an unwillingness
to trust in God
and that's often
where more of us
are as Christians
because we go through
difficulties with him.
We see things
that are difficult
in our lives
or that are happening
to people we love
or there might have been
people in our lives
that have hurt us.
There might have been
people in your history
or in your life
that might have been
Christian or called
themselves Christian
and might have not
acted like it
and might have really
hurt you or someone else
and for that reason
you say,
is this God trustworthy
if people can follow him
and claim to believe in him
and then behave like this?
One of the most common
objections we get
as apologists
is how can you claim
that this is true
when the evidence
of it amongst Christians,
we have so much evidence
of Christians not behaving
like the Christ
that they claim to follow?
And that's fair.
I think that's a fair question.
That's something we should,
we're all going to have
to answer for them.
That's why we have to all
continue working
and building communities,
loving communities.
But let me tell you
something about
why that's an incorrect
and erroneous way
of judging this God
and of making a decision
about this God.
If you think of
a beautiful piece of music,
I just Googled
because I'm nowhere near
cultured enough to know this.
What's the most famous
piece of music
that Beethoven ever composed?
According to Google,
which means it has to be true,
it turns out that
it's Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
A beautiful piece of music
like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony,
it doesn't matter
how much I practiced
on the piano,
and I'm not a pianist at all,
I would never be able
to play that in the way
that Beethoven played it.
Even the pianists
in the room,
if you're honest
with yourselves,
you would know
you would never be able
to play it
the way he played it.
That symphony
was composed
by Beethoven
for Beethoven.
He's the only one
capable of playing it perfectly.
Every other person
that tries to play it
is an imperfect representation.
Some people might get close,
lots of people might,
but it's still
an imperfect representation.
The Christian life
has only ever been played,
the song
has only ever been played,
by one person perfectly,
the person of Jesus Christ.
That's the person
for us to look at
to make a decision
in relation to our own life
about whether or not
to accept or reject
this God,
this God of the impossible.
If that's what's holding you back,
that someone has done something,
or you look at Christians
and you're not impressed,
it's irrelevant
as to whether or not
you're impressed by them.
Look at the person of Jesus.
So when we look at
these sources of doubt
that people use
for underestimating God
or that people fall to
for underestimating God,
just a philosophical struggle
to accept
that the supernatural
can happen
or a personal struggle
to trust in God
because of other people
that might have hurt them
or experiences
they might have had,
the answer to both
of those doubts
is to look at
the person of Jesus Christ.
It all comes back
to the person
of Jesus Christ.
He's the person
that God came into
the world as,
God's Son.
the most perfect
human representation
of God possible
in our world.
The most perfect
human representation
of God
that was possible
in our world
is Jesus Christ.
So what this all
comes back to
is what is our response
to Jesus Christ?
The whole thing
comes down to that.
What is my response
and your response
to the person
of Jesus Christ?
Well, when it comes
to the virgin birth,
there's lots of things
we can see about him,
about how he came
into the world
through this virgin birth
that already distinguish him
from other people
in human history
that have asked us
to follow them
or follow their principles
or follow their philosophies.
The most interesting
and most powerful,
I think,
gets back to
the Shakespeare thing.
It's when you look
at all of these
other religions,
they're always conducted,
religions or worldviews,
either entirely
in the supernatural
or entirely
in the natural.
The Hinduism example,
which is, of course,
most prevalent
in the part of the world
where I'm from,
it's all mythological.
It's all in the supernatural realm.
Those gods never interacted.
Nothing ever happened here.
You just have to trust
that it happened
in another supernatural place.
In many senses,
the same with the Greek
and the Roman gods.
Other religions,
like Islam, for example,
happened entirely
in the natural.
God never came here.
He never directly interacted.
He never, you know,
made presence
with the world he created.
He just dictated
something to someone
and then that was
the rules and regulations
from which we should all be
responding to
and living by.
This God,
this God of the impossible,
is the only one
of any worldview,
of any religion
or philosophy
in human history,
that brings together
the supernatural
with the natural.
A supernatural God
coming into the world
as a baby,
as a person.
That's unique
in and of itself.
One of the other things
I find interesting
with the virgin birth
is if we were trying
to fool people,
if they,
if the authors of the Gospels
were trying to make something up,
you wouldn't
bring the person
you call God,
bring the Son of God
into the world
through an illegitimate birth.
That just creates more work
for apologists.
It just makes it less credible.
It just makes it less respectable.
It just makes it less proper.
It automatically puts
the whole system of belief
on the back foot
when you were trying
to get the word out to people.
You just wouldn't make that up.
It's unhelpful
to make it up.
Another of the many reasons
why we see the uniqueness
of Jesus Christ
is because of his
ongoing involvement
with the world
through his spirit.
And this is the kicker,
really,
because this is the answer
that the angel gave to Mary
when she said,
hey,
virgins don't get pregnant.
He said,
yes,
but the Holy Spirit
will make it possible.
The Holy Spirit,
many of us often forget this,
he's not some abstract
team member
of the Trinity
that's like running drinks
for them.
He's the Holy Spirit
of Jesus Christ.
He's the Holy Spirit
of God the Father.
He's those two persons
of the Trinity
in spirit,
as a spirit.
And he's still with us.
He's inside everyone
that's accepted Jesus
into their lives.
He still works miracles.
He still has the capacity
of the Holy Spirit
that resulted in Mary's pregnancy.
That supernatural capacity
is still accessible
to all of us.
So all of this evidence
that points to the truth,
not just the possibility,
but the truth
of the virgin birth,
the truth of the existence
of this God,
is quite overwhelming
when you start looking through it.
And I could keep going.
I don't have time
to keep going.
But what's interesting
about all of this,
I've been talking about evidence,
I've been talking like a lawyer,
all of this evidence
might point to something's existence
or someone's existence,
even the miracles.
And there's so many others,
right,
turning water into wine
and healing people
and even raising,
you know,
friends of his from the dead
that Jesus performed.
But none of them
have a response imperative.
In a sense,
without wanting to diminish
their power,
it's kind of like fire twirling
these miracles.
Because yeah,
they're great,
but then what am I meant
to do with all of this?
That's great for them.
Great that they got free wine.
Particularly living in Singapore,
it's really great
that they got free wine.
But what about
what does that have to do with me?
What's the point of all of this?
Where is the response imperative?
And so,
my point to you is
that
the virgin birth
in and of itself
is proof that God exists.
The fact that God
came into the world
as a person
is proof that he exists.
But
there's no response imperative
if that's the end of the story.
It just proves that he exists
and that's it.
That's the end of the story.
We might as well
just get on with it.
So powerfully
and so importantly though,
that's not the end of the story.
Because this virgin birth
and even all of the miracles
that Jesus performed
after he was born
and grew up
was just a preface
to the main event.
This supernatural power
that we see through
the virgin birth,
the supernatural power
we see through the miracles,
they were just a glimpse.
They weren't even
the trailer
or the previews
in the movie
when you go to see the movie.
They were barely
the popcorn smell
that you smell
when you get to the theater.
That's how unimportant
they were
in relation
to what came next.
What makes something
relevant for you and me?
Something wonderful
on a screen
or something wonderful
in a book,
however true,
doesn't in and of itself
make it relevant
for you and me.
All of these miracles
are just miracles.
But what if there was
a miracle?
What if God performed
a miracle
that was especially
for you,
that was about you,
that was because of you
and that was for you?
And here's the thing.
God didn't just send
Jesus into the world.
He didn't come into the world
as a person
just to prove
that he was God,
just to show off
that he could do
the impossible.
God had a dilemma.
This might be difficult
to stomach.
It was difficult
for me to understand
and I'd been a Christian
for five years
when this was clearly
explained to me.
God had a dilemma.
His dilemma was
that he's a God
of perfect justice
and a God
of perfect mercy.
And so he wanted
relationship with us.
That's why he created us,
for relationship with him.
And yet we are imperfect
and we know deep down
that we are.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
the Nobel laureate
in literature,
very famously said,
the line that divides
good and evil
cuts through the heart
of every man and woman.
The line that divides
good and evil
cuts through the heart
of every man and woman.
Now I agree,
when I look around the world
it cuts through the heart
in different places
for different people,
but it definitely
cuts through my heart
and I'm sure
if we look inside
ourselves we can see that.
So God has an
impossible situation.
What's he going to do
about the evil
inside people,
the fact that people
are imperfect
and he's perfect
and you can't have
imperfect and perfect
coming together.
It's like oil and water.
It's like a chemical reaction.
It's an aversion.
But he still wants
relationship.
And so some people say,
well he should have
just forgiven.
He's always asking us
to forgive.
Why didn't he just forgive?
The problem with that is
he would have honoured
his character
as a God of mercy
and a God of relationship
but he would have
violated his character
as a God of justice.
So he's a God of justice.
He can't leave
all of this imperfection
unpunished and undealt with
but he's also a God of mercy.
He wants relationship.
He doesn't cast us away.
He ceases to be
loving and merciful.
He can't punish us
in the way that we
deserve to be punished.
Then he ceases,
he can't avoid punishing us
sorry,
he ceases to be
a God of justice.
So what does he do?
This is what leads
to the greatest miracle
in human history.
The greatest miracle
of all time.
The greatest display
of overcoming
the impossible.
Because God's situation
seems impossible.
He's in an impossible
situation.
He comes into the world
as a person,
Jesus Christ,
and sacrifices himself
to take on
all of our imperfection,
all of our sin
as we Christians
sometimes call it,
onto himself
to deal with
all of that.
In dealing with the sin,
in atoning for it,
in paying for it,
in paying the cost of it,
he honours
his character
as a God
of justice
because he's dealing
with this justly.
And in dealing
with the sin,
he honours
his character
as a God
of perfect love
and perfect mercy
because he's being
merciful to us.
He's not making us
pay the price for it.
That's the cross
of Jesus Christ.
When we look deep
inside our own hearts,
we see a need,
whether we're Christian
or we're not,
there is a need
for mercy
and justice
and compassion.
And there is a desire
for love
and relationship.
Isn't it so incredible,
then,
that the greatest miracle
in history,
the cross of Jesus Christ,
brings perfect mercy
and perfect justice
and perfect compassion
together
and in doing so,
it anchors it
in supernatural love
for the purpose
of relationship.
All the components
we find in our heart,
it brings them all together
in an incredible
and an amazing way.
And you and I
have been called
into up close
and personal relationship
with this God
of the impossible.
And if you've already
accepted that call,
then today,
you're being called
deeper into that relationship.
We are called
into an up close
and personal relationship.
You know,
one of the most powerful
things about the cross
that is just completely
mind and heart
blowing
is that if you,
and God says this
to you,
not you collectively
as a group,
but to you,
He's speaking to you now,
if you were the only person
in the world,
He still would have come
for you and died
on the cross.
If you were the only one,
He still would have come
and died for you
on the cross
so He could be
in loving relationship
with you.
That's how amazing
the cross of Jesus Christ is.
That's the supernatural,
impossible nature
of the love
of Jesus Christ.
Even the word love,
in my view,
is just the best expression
we can give it
with the English language.
You can't even express
what that meant
and what He did
and why He did it
and what it means
for you and me.
We do the best we can
with words.
So the question is,
what's our response
to all of this?
We've seen the differences
between Mary and Edmund
when they were presented
with the supernatural.
We see how Mary trusted,
Mary accepted
what the angel was saying
and in the end,
Mary embraced her position
as one who was chosen
and favoured by God.
The question for you and I
is are we willing
to accept wholeheartedly
in full submission
the reality
that we have been chosen
and favoured by God
and called into relationship?
What's our response
to that?
I said that the world
was like a jungle
and all of the other world views
were giving us ways
to get through the jungle.
It's only the cross
of Jesus Christ
that understands
that we are incapable
of getting through
that jungle ourselves
and it comes in
with a helicopter
and it drops a ladder
and it rescues us
out of the jungle.
Every other world view
out there
will be based
on either a system
of philosophy
or a set of rules
or a set of principles
or a way of thinking
or a culture
or a set of behaviours
and rituals.
It's only
at the feet
of Jesus Christ.
It's only
the Christian world view
that is a rescue mission.
It's not a religion.
It's not a set
of philosophies.
It's a rescue mission
because it's about
a relationship
with an individual.
It just so happens
that individual
happens to be
the God of the universe.
Not about rules.
Not even about responsibilities
but about relationship.
So wherever you are
with him
in that relationship
whether you haven't
entered it yet
whether you entered it
in the past
and you might have
drifted from it
or you've gone
lukewarm on it
or whether you entered
it some time ago
or you entered it recently
and you are on fire for it
I encourage you
to go deeper
to take more time
and more heart
and more of your mind
to spend time with Jesus
to spend time in the scriptures.
If you need to do business
with God today
don't let this day go by
without you doing business
with him.
Just whenever you get home
or even
while we're finishing up here
take some time.
If you need to talk to someone
and ask questions
if you need
if you have a particular question
that I didn't cover
there are so many of them
that you need responded to.
If the gospel of Jesus Christ
was true
and I believe
from the bottom of my heart
to the bottom of my brain
that it is true
because I've been
in relationship with him
if it's true
it should stand up
to any and every question
that we could possibly think of.
The truth
can stand up to questioning.
The truth
can stand up to questions.
And so I encourage you
in your search for truth
that as you're searching for it
and as you find it
remember
the world will give you
lots of answers
and ideas
and theories
but it's only in the scriptures
it's only in the Christian faith
that you can be assured
that the truth
is not an idea
it's not an abstraction
it's not a set of philosophies
the truth is a person
a person that loves you more
than anyone else
has ever loved you.
He knows you
to your depths
even your darkest depths
and he loves you
quite literally
to the heavens.
This God of the impossible
who wants to walk with you
so that together
you can do impossible things
things that you might think
right now
based on what you know
and based on your perception
can't happen.
He wants to make them happen
with you
and for you
and wants to walk with you.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father
I pray for everyone in here
wherever they are with you
I just pray that your love
would shroud them
that that sense of comfort
and strength
and hope
that can only be made full
in human hearts
when it comes through you
would be renewed
in every heart here.
I pray that those
who are searching for you
would find you
and would submit to you
and I pray that
everyone here
would go deeper
in their knowledge of you
and their relationship with you
today and from here on.
In Jesus name.
Amen.