“When the Future Invaded the Present”
Easter 2006
Dr.
There is a difference, sometimes
even a conflict, between what we can reason to be true and what we actually
experience.
For example the human brain can
be dissected and analyzed and proven to be made up only of certain cells
pulsing with electrical energy.
But placed in the conscious human being, the brain is much more than what can be analyzed.
There is an awareness and a self-awareness that cannot be explained by merely what is, by the material.
Our experience surpasses what
can be naturally explained.
Life
is infinitely greater than the mere sum of its parts.
We can describe physical matter, we can track the internal manufacturing and distribution of chemicals surging through the body, we can explain the synapses of the brain but how do you explain love.
Within the past week, I was lying on the bed with my young son one night after we had read together.
He was
sleepy and he laid his head on my chest and flung his arm over me and then just
gently patted me.
What does
a father feel in that moment?
Our experience points beyond what we can explain by the material
world.
It has happened many times, but I remember one time particularly vividly.
I was on my motorcycle on a summer evening in the
The air was
that perfect temperature that you just about can’t even feel.
The light
was soft from the sun sinking slowly in the west.
The trees, the cliffs, the mountain peaks all around, the smooth pavement making for almost silent movement along the road combined to make one of those perfect times.
I was suddenly aware of it all, and I drove for miles just weeping.
I was
filled with joy, with wonderment, with peace and yet at the same time a
yearning for more.
I was tempted to say, “it doesn’t get any better than this” but I knew intuitively that this was only part of something much deeper and bigger – something I couldn’t begin to get my mind around.
Life is infinitely
greater than the sum of its parts –
Life, as we experience it with its beauty and
pleasure, points beyond life.
I’ve stood alone on the
I’ve looked
out into that vastness and found it haunting.
I felt
swallowed up in its largeness, and there was a disturbing unsettled sense that
there is so much more.
You can’t begin to explain those
emotions physiologically.
You can’t even explain them psychologically.
They
point to something outside of us, outside of our
world.
There is a difference, sometimes
even a conflict, between our five senses and our sixth sense, our intuition.
An important example of that is
physical death.
Our five senses tell us death is
the end.
If you have seen a dead body, particularly a dead human body, and especially if you have watched a body die, your five senses tell you it is over.
There is no evidence for anything beyond.
The humanist manifesto declares: “As far as we know, the total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body.”
Bertrand Russell opined, “No intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.”
But our “sixth sense,” our
intuition, says they are wrong!
Everything within us demands that life is more.
Yes, there have probably always
been atheists, but not many.
Every culture ever known has believed in life beyond this life.
We have intuitively known that the passions we feel, the beauty we behold, all that we experience of life, point to something outside of ourselves.
Before the disintegration of the
The Soviets had made a religion out of denying the existence of God.
But there, in the very citadel of that godless regime, amidst the most powerful of its leaders, Mrs. Breshnev, dared to defy the hopelessness of their beliefs.
Just before the casket was closed, she reached down into it and made the sign of the cross on her husband’s chest.
Though schooled in atheism, she hoped they had all been wrong and that the love she had experienced would not end at the grave
She hoped there was yet another life.
Love, beauty, and hope all point beyond.
Our
experience cries for it but unaided reason denies it.
What can we know, what can we trust?
I’ve spoken already this morning
of the difference and conflict that often exists between our intuition
and experience of life on the one hand and our five senses and
unaided reason on the other.
But there is a third source of truth – It is called “revelation” – truth that is revealed to us.
Someone from that other reality,
from that reality that we intuitively know must be there, reveals truth to us.
Oh, we have evidence of that
other reality – the reality of God.
The
beauty of this universe shouts the existence of God.
Psalm
19:1 “The heavens declare the
glory of God;
the skies proclaim
the work of his hands.
Or as
the Apostle Paul wrote of it in Romans 1:20 “For 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.”
The passions and hopes of
mankind demand a reality beyond what we can see and God gives us evidence of
that reality.
But while the existence of
another world, of God, was universally known, the question of the immortality
of us humans was still unresolved.
While God remains eternal, while the world goes on, does death mean the end for the individual?
Mankind had always hoped
otherwise, God had promised otherwise, but no one had seen evidence of it.
Death
seems so final.
But then something happened that
changed everything.
Mark 16: 1-7
“When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene,
Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to
anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after
sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other,
"Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"
But when they
looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.
As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting
on the right side, and they were alarmed.
"Don't be
alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was
crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But
go, tell his disciples and Peter, `He is going ahead
of you into
Do you realize what this means?
For all of human history, up to that time, death appeared to be the end.
But in the resurrection of Jesus everything becomes
possible.
God opened a window
allowing us a glimpse into the future.
From another reality, a reality
beyond our own, an existence outside our created universe, God reached into
ours.
He began it with the incarnation
– God the Son coming to earth!
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word (God the Son) and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
Hebrews 1:3 “The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”
John
He entered our world and became one of us.
But he not only entered our world, he allowed us to see into the world to come, into that reality beyond our time and space.
For he not only lived among us and died for us, he rose from the dead.
Over 500 witnesses saw him; saw
his resurrected body, a body no longer limited by the frailty of our fallen
humanness, a body no longer subject to death.
In
him we see past the grave and we see our future if we are trusting in him.
Here’s the way the Bible says it, 1 Corinthians 15:20-24 “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (died). For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.
The Bible declares what we suspect intuitively but can only know by revelation – there is life beyond this life.
And it is that life which
gives this life meaning.
In God the Son, God reached from the future, from the age to come, back into this present age.
1 John 5:11-12 “And this is the testimony: God has given us
eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who
does not have the Son of God does not have life.
There is more than
meets the eye.
The
longings of our hearts are not mere illusions.
We do not have to reconcile ourselves to a random world without
meaning. (Cf. Chapter 23 The
Good Life by Colson and Fickett)
Because he lives, we too shall live, and do live.
It is that future existence, that future experience that makes sense of the passions and beauty, the human experience here and now.
Jesus said he came that we might have life, and have it abundantly.
That requires a perspective beyond the grave.
What you can see depends on your vantage point; because of
Jesus, I will view life from the entrance of the empty tomb. (Paraphrase of W. Paul Jones)
Are you trusting in the risen Savior? Will you?