[Below, you'll find the thought process that I turned into Sunday's sermon. From the pulpit, I went off script a bit, thus, adding it here. It was written to be preached the day after the false prediction that May 21 was the Judgement Day, and I've decided not to go through and alter the words for this later publication of it.]
As of yesterday, another Judgment Day prophecy has come and gone. Harold Camping, the 89-year old co-founder of Family Radio, used a complex mathematical formula he believed was present in the scriptures to determine that as the six o clock hour struck yesterday (all across the globe), massive earthquakes would ensue, and the rapture would occur. While non-believers took it as an opportunity to mock and the vast majority of believers shrugged it off, there are a few scattered mostly throughout the United States who gave literally everything they owned, and all their savings, to prepare for and warn about this coming event, forsaking the clear biblical promise that, while we believe the end is imminent, no one can know the day nor the hour. As of today, they are left with nothing but a lot of questions. Pray for them. As a matter of fact, let’s do that now.
I was moved this week by the response of a pastor here in town, Gene Barron of Valley View Christian Church. In a pastor’s prayer gathering, we were discussing this prediction. Gene recounted a conversation he recently had with a member of his church about this. “I don’t know about it,” Gene said to the person, and then added, “but I hope he’s right.”
That statement gave me pause. To be honest, I’m mostly frustrated by Camping’s prediction. I’ve shrugged it off and went on with my life. Camping added foolishness to the Gospel. He didn’t need to. A resounding message of the Bible – both the Old and the New Testament – is this: “live like it’s the end, plan like it’s not.” To me, this is the message of Proverbs, and it is certainly the message of Jesus. The concept of the end, without any specific predictions, is strange enough. But we believe that when it happens, it will be the best thing possible. That’s a little weird.
Check out 1 Corinthians 1:18-24.
The gospel itself is foolishness to “those who are perishing.” We spend a lot of time trying to dress it up so that it does not appear foolish. But the story in and of itself is mind-boggling. Let’s take a few minutes to remember the story that brings us together every week:
Beginnings: The Self-Existent, All-Powerful, Perfect Being and the Universe
A Self-Existent, All-Powerful, Perfect Being chose to create the universe. The universe, for those who have forgotten a vast expanse of space, heat, light, and elements. He created all of that with the goal of supporting a tiny speck (in comparison) floating around a medium to smallish star (we call it the sun). The balance of every other item in that huge universe somehow made it possible for that one tiny speck to support his tiny and intricate creations on it. He covered it with water, and then separated out the water so that there could be dry land – but made it so the water functioned in an intricate system of evaporation and redistribution to support growth of all manner of living things on that dry land.
Beginnings 2: The Creation of Human Beings (Tiny in Comparison, but Imago?)
At the pinnacle of all this stuff which he made just by saying it out loud (“let there be light,” etc.), this Self-Existent, All-Powerful, Perfect Being created a comparatively miniscule entity. He made this miniscule entity using the other elements he had already spoken into existence, and then he breathed life into this entity and named it adam, which means “of the earth.” The Self-Existent, All-Powerful, Perfect Being, after creating a universe that is at least 28 Billion Light-years (5.87 Trillion Miles = 1 light year… the earth is just under 25,000 miles around) in Diameter (that’s as far as we can see), full of stars and planets, declared that this single entity was the one thing in all of that which was designed to be an image of Himself. Originally, adam was one entity. But, because adam was made in the image of the Self-Existent, All-Powerful, Perfect Being, he was made to be in community with equals (we believe this Self-Existent, All-Powerful, Perfect Being exists somehow as One Being with Three Persons who dwell in perfect unity and community forever). Therefore, the Self Existent, All Powerful, Perfect Being used a portion of adam to create another being who was also in the Self Existent, All Powerful, Perfect Being's image, yet was slightly different than adam. So, adam called this second entity ishshah, and said the ishshah was “bone of [his] bone and flesh of [his] flesh,” which is a Hebrew way of saying “the is the very best of all that I am (just like the “song of songs” is the best song, or the King of Kings is the best king).
Beginnings 3: The Cultural Mandate
These two were instructed by the Self-Existent, All Powerful, Perfect Being to multiply, to fill the earth, and to subdue it. He made it clear to them that he had provided everything they needed. Their only instruction was that they were to trust the Self-Existent, All Powerful, Perfect Being for right and wrong, and not to seek to be the decision makers about right and wrong on their own. And for a time, we don’t know how long, Adam and ishshah, whom he named Eve, dwelt in this created place with joy and freedom. It seems they interacted with the Perfect Being easily, freely, and intimately. Adam and Eve had all they wanted. After all, the vast universe was designed to support life on earth, and they were the crowning achievement of life on earth. They were human beings as every one of us imagine when we think of how our bodies, minds, and abilities should be – in perfect control, perfect comfort, perfect strength, perfect relationship, perfect dominion of the rest of creation. They had no boundaries save one: trust the all powerful, perfect being for right and wrong. Yet in Perfection, this being saw fit to give these two the opportunity to attempt to decide right and wrong on their own – this was represented by the fruit of a certain tree. Its presence in their garden gave them an opportunity to trust him… and an opportunity not to.
Beginnings 4: The Fall
In a moment of mistrust, Adam and Eve became convinced that they could be equals with the Self-Existent, All Powerful, Perfect Being if they took the decisions for right and wrong into their own hands, so they ate from the tree. We call this “the fall.” The fall initiated a cycle in this tiny blue-green speck in the corner of the vast universe. Many of Adam and Eve’s tasks continued – they were still to multiply and fill the earth, still to subdue it, but because they had attempted to find a right and wrong, a good and evil, outside of the direct revelation and direct provision of God, God did an interesting thing: he gave them their wish. Adam and Eve, and their descendants, now had to work the multiply and subdue the land on their own power. Childbirth became a painful and arduous process for the Woman, and submission of the land for provision became a painful and arduous process for the Man. The direct revelation of God was no longer readily available, and so a longing developed in the first descendants of the man and the woman to please or appease God, but even that was wrought with difficulty and envy, and it resulted in the first major abuse of the God-Image abilities: one man took the life of another. Oh, the story spins out of control here - chaos, murder, war, idolatry, adultery... all of it comes sweeping in.
Redemption Through Israel: The People and their Book
The Self-Existent, All Powerful, Perfect Being chose to continue to interact with a select few of the descendants of Adam. These people recorded his interactions first through memorized spoken words, and then into writing – we call these recordings the Scriptures. These recorded interactions and stories of the people of God began to weave a story that was building toward something: it was building toward redemption. But in the strangest of ways: This Perfect Being chose one family line and said “these are my people,” while the rest of the people lived the entirety of their lives worshipping created beings.
The Son and The Cross
Thousands and thousands of years after the Adam and the Ishshah ate the forbidden fruit, people like us look back on the story of these people and say “ahhhh, I see: God (the Self Existent, Perfect, All Powerful Being) intentionally allowed all of this to happen so that the maximal amount of worship from all of these Image-bearers would be given to himself, specifically to the Person of the Son.” How, you ask? Remember how Paul wrote that the “message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing”? He wrote it because it is mind boggling. The message of the cross is that God allowed every detail I’ve just described, plus billions more details in between, so that one of the Members of the Three-in-One God could shed his Divine power for a time to become a descendant of the Adam, live a life that was perfectly submitted in trust to the Self-Existent, All Powerful, Perfect Being in every way (that is, he never chose to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, as everyone else does), and then to be accused of being a false prophet and dangerous rebel so that he would be publicly executed on a Roman Cross.
So… what’s the Message of the Cross again?
All this was done so that this descendant of the Adam could be a new Adam, and initiate a new generation of descendants who would have the privilege of the initial perfect relationship with the Self-Existent, All Powerful, Perfect Being and ultimately would return to the perfect physical state. You see, after his execution on the Roman Cross, this man came back to life. That’s the story we tell. And this new Adam, according to the “message of the cross,” initiated a process whereby, eventually, all those who decided to bet their lives on the effectiveness of his public execution, would experience the perfect existence that was originally planned for the descendants of the first adam: that is, they would have perfect dominion over the earth and everything that grows in it, and they would dwell in perfect trust of the Self Existent, All Powerful, Perfect Being, who would be so pleased with his plan of sending his own Son to make a way that he would now be totally and completely present with all those who had chosen to give up on the behavior of the first Adam and put their trust in him for good and evil, right and wrong. The rest would dwell forever in a place that, in comparison to that perfect existence, could be called torment – they would forever have exactly what they want: to be forced to figure out good and evil, right and wrong, on their own… and to be eternally frustrated by the resulting competition, labor, and decay. Eventually, in eternity, this will have been the only reality, when the infinite dwarfs the finite. Billions of years make thousands look like a mere moment.
All that is the message of the cross. We believe that a man named Jesus, who was born to a relatively powerless people living in and around a city called Jerusalem (not one of the major cities of the world even at that time), was totally a human being and at the same time was the incarnated God of the universe, and that he chose to live such a life that through his sacrificial death we would be able to enter back into the perfect relationship with the Creator of the whole universe, where that Creator would completely enjoy our company and we would completely enjoy his, and in that for an eternity we will joyfully glorify him with everything we do, with total ease.
Why The Mocking Shouldn’t Be Shocking
It should be a bit refreshing to us, with all that in mind, that for the last couple days our whole culture has connected all those who believe what we believe with this man, Harold Camping, and to have mocked the foolishness of the story he was telling. His details and his methods were very wrong. That ought to be a lesson for all of us who believe this book, the Bible, is totally authoritative for all of life – if we really believe that, we ought to really know what it says. But the overarching message from Camping and his followers was nervously right: Jesus himself taught that the end, which included the great day of Judgment, was imminent, and that we should live with an urgency and expectancy of the end in light of that fact. He appointed everyone who believed his message and worshipped him as Lord to become a herald of that very news: the only way to enjoy the fullness of Human Potential is to entrust one’s life to Jesus himself. And when that day comes, to Pastor Gene’s point, it will be the best possible thing, because it means that God is satisfied with the number of those who will dwell in his perfect presence, and has decided to move the story of this little blue-green dot to it’s final, intended purpose. For that, our hearts were made to long. Judgment Day is to be the greatest celebration the world has ever known for believers, for it is the completion of all the justice and redemption that we only see glimmers of today.
The Message of the Cross is that we are in the in-between time, that the suffering is only for a “little longer” and that there will be a joyful conclusion that far exceeds anything we can ask or imagine. The message of the cross says to all those who believe it “hold on! Endure! It will be worth it!” Not only that, but the message of the cross says “You are now empowered to live in the way God intended for you to live, but the world has not yet been totally redeemed, so you must enjoy the spiritual reality and await the physical manifestation of it.” That means the original instruction to the first Adam and Ishshah applies to those who believe: multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. That means people who believe this whole story I’ve told also believe it is our responsibility to bring every part of this world – all the resources, all the stuff, all the animals, all the governments, and especially all the people – under submission of the NEW ADAM, who is named King Jesus. If more people understood the message of the cross, many who think they believe would stop believing, and those who hear it and but don’t believe it would mock it. They should laugh just as the world gripped its collective belly and gave a long hard laugh at Harold Camping and his followers last night and this morning. That’s the sort of response believers are supposed to expect when we assert our message on the world.
Were you embarrassed by the blogs, the tweets, the facebook posts, the articles, the talk show hosts, and the conversations on the street? I was. I’ve spent the last several months since our church administrator first told me about the billboard on 285 being frustrated, angry, and embarrassed by Camping and his fallacious prediction. It’s true: he made a mockery of the Bible. He didn’t need to do that. He didn’t need to dig deep and apply some crazy formula to it. The message the Scriptures tell, if you step back and look at them in whole, is wild enough. It is full of hope and mystery. It attempts to explain how things got here, why things are the way they are, and how all the wrong that everyone can see with all of it can be fixed. We call that the message of the Cross. We call that message, as strange as it is, good news.
Do you believe it? Have you traded your attempted independence for a radical, earth-shaking dependence on the Message of the Cross, and everything it means? Or, perhaps you’re hearing it told this way for the first time, and realizing that you’ve been trying – perhaps believing you were a Christian all along – to figure out right and wrong on your own, maybe even to imitate this God, when instead all you needed was the power of the Cross applied to your life. Believers, in this world we understand trades – trading is at the heart of how we interact and provide. We trade services for goods. Well, this is that, only it’s a total trade: you apply the message of the cross by giving up. Trading everything you’re carrying around for a life of submission and trust in this God. You can walk in that trust by believing that the way he’s given us to live is a better way of subduing the creation than what we were trying before. It is a total surrender to his priorities, loving what he loves, hating what he hates, trusting what he has revealed, constantly depending on him to empower you to live, and therefore navigating this creation in the rhythm and plan designed by the Creator, which involves being unswayed by pain, suffering, and disappointment, letting those only feed and fuel our hope all the more in the great story he is telling.
