A few weeks ago, I met with a friend I’ve had since childhood. We’d been bantering back and forth on Facebook swapping jokes, bemoaning the Bears, and sharing family news… by the providence of God we’d run into each other a few times. But we’d never had the opportunity to sit down and talk about life. For whatever its worth, one of my biggest regrets in life is not maintaining these friendships. I was so eager to run away from the past, I never looked back.
We had no trouble picking right up where we left off! After a while I asked him, “Are you walking with God these days? Are you part of a church?” He told me that he had attended some “awesome” churches, but that no matter how hard he tried to get it, he just couldn’t “get” or “feel” the God thing. In that instant, my heart sank through my chest. I was overwhelmed with incredible sadness. I know a lot of people who “feel” absolutely no connection with God.
Now, his main reason for attending church was he didn’t want to deprive his kids of a life of faith should they want to pursue it. He was doing what his parents had done. Ironically, later in life, his dad became a Methodist pastor. Recently, his dad tried to persuade him to trust in God—"to get saved.” But the whole religion thing feels coercive to him.
Incidentally, I found myself relating to my friend’s story. Have you ever experienced someone trying to coerce you to believe something? How many of you were subjected to conspiracy theories over Turkey this past week? I don’t even know how to respond to 90% of the stuff I hear these days. I just shake my head. I try not to role my eyes. I try not to smirk. It’s like where do you begin to unravel the layers and layers of people’s thinking? A lot of people’s beliefs just aren’t plausible. They are more rooted in fear and emotion than anything rational.
This past summer I chainsaw carved an enormous 7ft Bigfoot. Well, first I carved a small 3ft bigfoot. It was a commissioned piece. In all sincerity, I’d always heard about bigfoot “sightings,” but I always assumed the bigfoot stuff was tongue-in-cheek. As I carved these beasts, I began encountering true believer after true believer! They were quite sincere. Just like there are Christian apologists—defenders of the faith—there are Bigfoot apologists! Just like there is Christian doctrine, there is bigfoot doctrine!
When we talk about our belief in God, when we talk about our belief in Jesus Christ… despite our sincerity… it’s as if were sharing conspiracy theories, or passing on bigfoot folklore, or folklore about Christmas. God isn’t anything you’re to take seriously—and certainly not Jesus.
When I mention wanting to run from my past—that was only partly true. There was little positive, encouraging, or redemptive about my old relationships. I desperately needed to hit some sort of relational reset button. But my bigger problem was philosophical, metaphysical, spiritual. In physics, we were taught about time, space, and matter. We were taught about the laws of nature. In biology we were taught about mind-boggling, seemingly irreducible complexity of every living thing from the least to the most sophisticated. Any notions about God drew headshakes, smirks, and eyerolls. I assumed any thought of God was not only irrational but indefensible. Yet there I was—I couldn’t stop thinking about God.
Just like no matter how hard some people try can’t believe in God (feel God), I simply couldn’t dismiss the idea of God. Yet at the same time I couldn’t fully “leap into faith.” I couldn’t just blindly leap to all the conclusions I knew Christian people (sincere and loving though they were) wanted me to reach! I had to be true to my own process--otherwise my faith would never be my own.
If you are like my friend, or if you find yourself relating to my story, here is my invitation to you… this Christmas, why not give belief in God, and especially belief in Jesus Christ a “full hearing.” When a lot of people say they don’t “get God” they aren’t trying to dismiss your faith. They are asking you to dig a little deeper, they are asking you to help them sort things out a little deeper.
Now a question that haunts me as a preacher is this—who am I to ever lead someone on such a journey? Am I even qualified? We can only pray that God will take the conversation far deeper into a person’s soul than humanly possible. And this is exactly what God does. God has to connect the dots. God has to fill the voids of wisdom, knowledge, and doubt in a person’s mind.
I think of something that God spoke to Moses in Deuteronomy 4:29. I take it to be one of the great promises of Scripture! “You will search for the Lord your God, and you will find him when you seek him with all your heart and all your soul.” We cannot make a person find God. We can’t make God be found. We can only preach, we can speak, we can pray, we can reason-explain-give understanding. But at the end of the day, it's God’s Spirit that must contend with man’s spirit and mind.
If you are a person who doesn’t “get God” or “feel God”—have you sincerely, with an open heart and mind, given God a fair and full hearing? I am praying that God can somehow use this series of messages to stir you to sincere faith.
This Christmas, dare to contemplate the Wonder of all Wonders. The Ancient philosophers called this the “Mystery of all Mysteries.” The Mystery of all Mysteries begins with our most fundamental assumption about reality. The Bible frames it this way: Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God…” Did everything truly begin with God? If not, then how? And when? And why? and whatever spawned all this?
The Atheist says, “In the beginning time, space, and matter…” Time, Space, and Matter just coexisted. They were co-eternal, uncreated, self-existing. Atheism’s twin cousin is “Agnosticism.” Agnosticism is that notion that “even if” there is more to reality than time, space, and matter we can’t know much about it. It’s really sad to say this—but for untold billions not only is Christmas dead, but God is dead, hope itself is dead.
What do you find compelling about Atheism or Agnosticism? Atheists loved to ask the question, “If there is a God, then where did God come from?” Children also ask this question. “If God exists, who created God?” But this question only displays a person is thinking wrongly about God—and I’ll tell you why.
One apologist explained it this way: “The God of the Bible is not affected by time, space, matter. If he is affected by time, space, matter he is not God. Time, space, and matter are what we call a ‘continuum.’ All of them have to come into existence in the same instance. If there were matter but no space, where would you put it? If there were matter and space but no time, when would you put it? You cannot have time, space, and matter independently. They have to come into existence simultaneously.
The Bible answers how in ten words: ‘In the beginning (time) God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter).’ So, you have time, space, matter (a trinity of trinities) created. You have Time (past, present, future), Space (length, width, height), and Matter (solid, liquid, gas). The God who created them has to be outside them. If He is limited by time, he is not God. The guy who created the computer isn’t in the computer running around in there changing the numbers on the screen. God is outside time and space and matter; above it, beyond it, and unaffected by it.
First and foremost, this Christmas is a time for you to contemplate, “Is it plausible that the God of the Bible exists?” A God who transcends time, space, and matter—the Great and Awesome God—the Creator of all time, of all space (the heavens) and all matter (the earth). If you seek this God with all your heart God promises that he will let you find Him.
Secondly, this Christmas is a time to contemplate whether you were created for God. Not just by God, but for God. In Genesis 1:26 God says: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.” And Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.” Countless volumes have been written, contemplating the vast meaning of these verses. I take these verses to declare that God is “intensely” and “intentionally” relational.
“Intensely relational” because everywhere in Scripture God is presented to be personal. He is speaking, conversing, conferring. There is something profoundly mysterious—something profoundly interdependent, coexistent, coeternal—something profoundly relational about God’s Divine Nature.
And God is “Intentionally Relational” because as God creates humankind, he creates us to fully relate to Him as He Himself is. God creates us with a capacity to intensely and intentionally reciprocate spiritual relationship with the Divine!
We know that matter can’t reproduce according to any kind other than itself. A rock is a rock. Dust is dust. H2O is H2O. There may very well be variation within one kind of thing—but no one has ever discovered any kind of mechanism by which one thing can become an entirely different thing. No one has discovered a mechanism in which a rock can become anything other than its own kind. A rock doesn’t become water. Matter doesn’t just suddenly become living, breathing soul. In Genesis 1-2 there are plants and animals—but they can only reproduce according to their own kind. But then there is humankind—specially created in God’s likeness and image! Rocks, plants, and animals haven’t been given a capacity to personally relate to God (nor speak of God, nor pray or speak to God).
We’ve certainly been created to live inside the continuum of time, space, matter—yet our soul seems unbound by time, space, and matter. The soul roams freely, contemplating the past, present, and future! The soul transcends mere the mere heigh, breadth, width of space. Though we are a mist or a vapor that just appears for a while, though were primarily liquid H2O, and materially carbon… were more than just matter. We matter infinitely more than our own matter. We have consciousness, longings, desires, hopes, aspirations, language, emotions, sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch, intuition. We have this insatiable need to connect, to relate, to know and be known, to love and be loved, to be good and do good! We are “spiritually hardwired” not just to contemplate, but to personally to relate to the Wonder of all Wonders—God Himself.
What if? What if there is a God who transcends all time, space, matter? What if this God, who exists in eternal fellowship, has created you and me with a capacity for full relationship with himself? What if knowing God, loving God, worshipping God, even participating in his divine nature—is the very thing we were created for?
But I want to leave you with an even greater “what if.” What if not only does this God exist… and not only did God create us for himself… but what if in the likeness of Jesus Christ, the God of the universe entered real time, and space, and this material world to draw you unto Himself? If the God of the Universe entered the world, would you recognize him? This is the true significance of Christmas.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” “No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.” “He was foreknown before the foundations of the world but was revealed in these last times for you. Through him you believe in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”
“Though existing in the form of God, He did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity.” “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and in the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.” “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.” “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High.”
If the Bible is true… Jesus is the Mystery of Mysteries, the Wonder of Wonders, the veil of heaven torn back, God making himself fully known! Could Jesus be the Son of God, the Wonder of Wonders, come in space, time, and in human flesh? Are you even open to the question? Deuteronomy 4:29, “. . .you will search for the Lord your God, and you will find him when you seek him with all your heart and all your soul.”