Three Impossible Things

We begin with a little exchange from Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass. Alice tells the White Queen, “One can’t believe in impossible things”. To which the Queen rather loftily replies, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

If you are reading this before Christmas breakfast (or Christmas lunch or dinner for that matter) you won’t want to be burdened, I’m sure, with that many impossible things. So we’ll restrict ourselves to three. Nor are the three things in question impossible to believe. They are actually all true. But they do all have something impossible about them.

An identity impossible to guess. What would you have seen had you been there? On the night that Jesus was born (for it’s about Jesus I want to speak)? Do you think you would have seen anything out of the ordinary? A glow of heavenly light around the baby’s head, for instance? Nothing of the kind. To judge by mere appearances this baby was no different from any other. But he was different.

Some people can disguise themselves just by wearing ordinary clothes. Out of uniform, dressed like everyone else, they pass along the street unrecognized. It is something like that with Jesus. In Jesus no less a being than God the Son has come to be with us. Why is that not apparent? Shouldn’t it be shining out of him? For wise purposes he has wrapped our human nature around himself in such a way that the Divine Person he is cannot be seen. Hence our first impossible thing. You cannot guess just by looking who this baby really is.

A helplessness impossible to exaggerate. There is no avoiding the question: why has God taken our nature and come to live in our world? The problem becomes especially acute when we fast forward to the end. Why is God submitting to, of all things, human death? And by crucifixion at that? The answer is humbling in the extreme. It is to help us in our helplessness. To do for us what we could never have done for ourselves.

Two things stand in the way of us enjoying an eternal friendship with God. One is our miserable failure to live as he has directed us to live (we have been very disobedient – which is what sin is all about). The other is our utter inability to deliver ourselves from our ever increasing guilt and the penalty we have justly incurred. We can neither please God by a life without sin nor put matters right with him. The end result is a helplessness impossible to exaggerate.

But not impossible to remedy! For in Jesus God has come powerfully to our aid. By his birth, by his life, and supremely by his death he has done for us what was so completely beyond us. He has opened the way for our sin to be forgiven and our relationship with God to be perfectly restored.

A love impossible to fathom. What was it that moved him to do that? When the cost was so immense? The Bible sums it up in a single word: love. It was because God so loved the world that he gave us his Son (John 3.16). It was because his own love was not a whit less that the Son was willing to come.

This love demands a response from us. An old English hymn-writer sums up what it should be: “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” To come to God in repentance, to look to him to save us, to live under his lordship from this day forward, to give him our heart’s love – nothing less will do. Let nothing less suffice.

David Campbell
Grace Baptist Church
777 W North Street
Carlisle, PA 17013

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Don’t close your eyes – or your ears

If you have never read the Bible you may be surprised at how it begins. Or rather, at how it doesn’t begin. Wouldn’t you expect a book that claims to be a revelation from God to begin with the evidence for his existence? What it actually does is plunge us straight into an account of God’s work of creation. His existence is simply pre-supposed.

Nor is the matter mended as we go on. The existence of God has certainly been a matter of keen philosophical discussion and various philosophical arguments have been developed to prove that God exists. The Bible itself, however, makes no such attempt. It continues and ends as it begins, with the existence of God taken for granted.

Along the way, however, it does give us pointers to his existence. We may think of them as a series of witnesses.  Now witnesses often contradict each other. But not these ones. They are united in the testimony that they bear. Listen to what they say, look at what they show us, and we are face to face each time with the God who is.

There is the testimony of God’s creation. The opening words of the Bible tell us that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1.1). In doing so he revealed certain things about himself. Here, for example, is what the Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Christians in Rome: “…since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Romans 1.20).

Think about someone speaking to you in your own language. You can understand what he’s saying. So with creation. The things that God has made speak to us. They tell us of his power, his wisdom, his glory, and therefore of his existence. And they do so in such plain words that we are without excuse if we choose to turn a deaf ear to them.

Then there is the testimony of God’s goodness. Back to the Apostle Paul, this time to one of his sermons. He is speaking to some people who all their lives had worshiped other gods. Paul acknowledges that God had permitted that. But he also asserts that God had been no passive bystander. Here are his words: “…he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy” (Acts 14.17).

Many people don’t believe in God because of the problem of evil. We mustn’t shut our eyes to that. But nor must we shut them to the fact of the good. This world is full of good things – things that supply our needs, that enrich our lives, that make existence on this planet not only possible but pleasant. How do we account for them? They are a testimony to the kindness of the God from whom they come. And as such, to his existence.

Finally, there is the testimony of God’s law. Why is it that every human being has an inner sense of right and wrong? Once more the Apostle Paul. Writing in Romans 2 (vs.14-15) he explains it in terms of a moral law whose requirements are written on our hearts. How is such a thing possible? Only through the work of a Divine Law-giver who made us to be moral beings.

The title of this article is an appeal: don’t close your eyes – or your ears. You now understand its thrust, don’t you? And your duty.

David Campbell
Grace Baptist Church
777 W North Street
Carlisle, PA 17013

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Hope for those who have none

Life after death. It is still the case that most people believe in it. In some form and in some place existence will continue beyond the grave.  And most expect, too, that they will be happy. Life can be miserable enough for them here. But their comfort is that there – beyond the grave – the happiness that has eluded them here will finally be theirs.

The Bible has a great deal to say about just such a bright future. And there is a particular word that it uses again and again as it does so. That word is hope. We’ve been thinking about it in our church just recently. Let me share with you some of the Bible’s teaching on it.

It is the gift of God. In one of his letters the Apostle Paul speaks of God as “the God of hope” (Romans 15.13). What he means is that hope is a blessing that flows to us from God. It is his gift. If we have it, it is because he has given it to us. If we lack it, it is to him we must go for it.

Which brings me to an important second point: not everyone has this hope. In another of his letters Paul describes his readers as having once been “without hope” (Ephesians 2.12). It is a picture of what sin has done to the human race. It has robbed us of a solid, well-grounded hope of happiness in the presence of God.

How this needs to understood – and believed! So many who imagine that all will be well in the world to come are utterly deceived. There is a massive change that must take place in us first. Jesus, God’s Son, must become our Savior. God must reconcile us to himself through him. Our sins must be forgiven, our lives renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Until then, we are just what the Apostle’s readers once were: without hope.

A third point is that all who do have this hope have everything to look forward to. The return of Jesus. Resurrection from the dead. A glorious new body that will never sicken or die. Life on a new earth and under new heavens. Freedom from sin. The supreme joy of serving God, seeing his glory, reflecting his likeness, bringing him praise. And all in the best of company. God has great things in store for his people!

Here is a fourth point: the certainty of it all. Hope is a word we often use in connection with things that are uncertain. We hope we will get well. Or that the sun will shine on our wedding day. Or that our job application will be successful. Or that we will live long. The problem is, we can’t be sure!

Contrast that with the hope of which we read in the Bible. In all its wonderful dimensions it is certain. It is a hope that will not disappoint. Those who have it will one day be in firm possession of all that it holds out to us. Here is why: its promises are nothing less than the promises of God. And because he is faithful we can be absolutely sure of their fulfilment.

One final point. There is hope for the hopeless. Have you come to see that the hope of the Bible isn’t yours? That the happiness you have been promising yourself is a mirage? That as things are between yourself and God you have every reason to fear the worst? Take heart. God is gracious and merciful. He invites you to look to him for the salvation from sin that you need. And promises hope in return.

David Campbell
Grace Baptist Church
777 W North Street
Carlisle, PA 17013

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Will we ever be done with death?

One of the Old Testament Psalms pictures people being swept away “in the sleep of death”. Later they are said to be “like the new grass of the morning: in the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered” (Psalm 90.4-5). Vivid images of a life that is brief at best; of a death that brings it, all too soon, to a close.

On the anniversary of 9/11 it is inevitable that our thoughts should turn in such a direction. And it is good that they should do so. For death is not what we want to have to think about. We are very adept in fact at not thinking about it. We shut it out of our minds as much as we can. It generally has to come knocking very loudly at our doors before we give it our full attention. That’s what it did on 9/11 2001. And though its knock may be fainter now, fourteen years on, it is to be hoped that many still will listen, pause, and ponder.

The title of this article asks if we will ever be done with death. Perhaps it’s a question you’ve never dreamed of asking. Death is so inescapably a fact of life that it has never occurred to you that it might be otherwise. Alternatively, it may be a matter of absorbing interest to you. The ongoing conversation about eventually finding a cure for death is one that you follow with intense eagerness.

So how shall we answer it? Authoritatively? As follows. There are sobering and alarming senses in which people will never be done with death. But there is also a wonderful sense in which people can and will be done with it – once and for all.

We begin with the negative. As long as this world continues death will continue too. It is the curse that we have brought upon ourselves by our sin. Death is the penalty of sin. And until sin is purged from our world death will continue to reign. The current death-rate is 100% of humans. And it’s going to stay that way until Jesus returns at the end of the age. Don’t build your hopes on someone someday finding a way to cheat it. They won’t.

But there is more to it than that. Has anyone ever spoken to you about the second death? You can read about it in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. It’s part of the vocabulary God uses when he speaks of Hell. Death is fundamentally about separation. First time round of the body and the soul. Then later, in the second death, of the whole person – body and soul together – from God. Sound desirable? Take it from God that it will be dreadful beyond words. And that there will be no end to it.

There is, however, another answer to our question. The same book of Revelation that speaks of the second death pictures for us a world without death: “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain”, it assures us, “for the old order of things has passed away” (Ch.21.4). You enter that world and you will be done with death forever.

Amazingly, it is someone’s death that stands at the heart of that hope. Jesus’ death. Why did Jesus die? So that through his death, those who believe in him might be done with death forever – and instead have everlasting life. Death need not have the last word. Nor will it if in your guilt and helplessness you look to Jesus for life.

David Campbell
Grace Baptist Church
777 W North Street
Carlisle, PA 17013

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