Nothing is Impossible

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.