DISCOVER GOD’S NEW WORLD
Josiah (640-609 BC) the king of Judah had tried to reform the people’s religious practices and moral behaviour. His efforts were too little and too late. Two decades after his death his kingdom was destroyed, Jerusalem ruined, and the Babylonian Captivity (the Exile) had started.
He tried to reform his people by returning to the golden age of Moses. The law of Moses was the foundation of Jewish religion and behaviour, and the book found in the Temple was Moses’ second law. That is what the name Deuteronomy.
Although the book of Deuteronomy contains laws and rules governing Israel’s religion and behaviour, there are some wonderful passages filled with breath-taking vision and inspiration. One such passage is found in Deuteronomy 4.32-40.
Read the whole passage. Space allows me only a few verses.
“For ask now of the days that are past, since the day that God created man, ask from one end of heaven to the other whether such a great thing as this has ever happened. Did any people ever hear the voice of a God as you have heard and still survive?”
Put this magnificent idea into a modern vocabulary. Search throughout the entire universe.
Enquire in the subatomic world of protons and electrons.
Peer into the night sky with its billions of stars and multitudes of galaxies. Search right back to the instant second in the birth of the universe. Has there ever been an event such as the God event?
God the eternal, infinite utterly pure and holy being, the source of all life, God the eternal one coming to people. God entering into the frail lot of human nature, loving people, giving himself for people, making people to be like himself eternal and pure.
That is the breathtaking significance of Jesus Christ.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Michael Collins, the third astronaut on Apollo 11, remained behind in the command module. Collins, alone in the space module, had to orbit the moon at the correct speed in order to rendezvous with the returning moon walkers.
On the dark side of the moon he was alone in the entire universe, out of touch with his colleagues, and out of contact with NASA.
In his miniscule capsule in the entire infinity of space, and throughout the 13.7 billions years since the big bang he was the only individual to encounter the universe in such a unique and singular way. But that is what it is like to encounter God in Jesus.
Such an encounter happens in Jesus. Forget Jesus meek and mild. Discard the image of a Jesus of Nazareth swooning about Palestine with a pat on the head for the kids. In Jesus, that passage in Deuteronomy comes alive. God comes to people. Has any event like this ever happened before?
Expand your vision of Jesus Christ. Open your heart and soul to the reality of the gospel message. In Jesus God filled the earth with heavenly goodness, God embraced humanity. God renewed the human race with his re-creative love and forgiving kindness. And God’s renewed world starts in you. In Jesus the eternity of God transforms your days, the infinity of God gives real meaning to your life, the goodness of God makes you a better person, and the Son of God makes you God’s child.
Samuel Rutherford was right to complain.“We have all shapen Christ but too narrow and too short and formed conceptions of his love in our conceit very unworthy of it. O, that people were taken and catched by Christ’s beauty and fairness.”
We should shout out. O, that people would be captivated by the sheer magnitude and wonder of God coming to everyone in his Son Jesus Christ. You embrace eternity when you grasp hold of Christ. You look into the sky and see the universe. You peer into your soul and discover God’s new world. Paul is so correct:
“If anyone is in Christ that person is a new creation. The old has passed away behold all things are new”(2 Corinthians 5.17).