HOW TO OPEN LIFE'S LOCKED DOORS (EASILY)

When I turned 50, I decided to do something really difficult. I enrolled in a university course to learn Biblical Greek. And, trust me when I say, this in no way is a brag – because I struggled through it and took far far longer than the average Biblical Greek student ordinarily takes to complete this course. I had to do twenty translation tests and then two major translations exams of the New Testament’s Greek text into English. I scraped through the course and somehow managed to pass it. I can testify that learning another language later in life is really hard! This is why I have the utmost respect for non-English-speaking migrants who come to our country and manage to learn English. Learning languages is not the only thing I find difficult. I envy those people who do the things easily that I find difficult to do or understand (like quadratic mathematic equations for example). Over the years I have pondered why it is that different people doing the same task can result in a person finding it incredibly easy who then gets it done quickly, and why another other person finds it next-to-impossible and as a result gives up trying to do it. I have discovered the answer to this conundrum lies in the “mat” principle.

I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,
but the LORD helped me.
Psalm 118:13

THE MAT PRINCIPLE

Imagine coming to an impressive holiday home that someone has lent you for your holiday. It has a large imposing door with a very sophisticated locking system. The owner of the holiday house has told you that when you arrive, you can just unlock the door and go on in and make yourself at home. Somehow in this conversation you forgot to ask for a key and the owner never mentioned it. You arrive. You turn the handle on the front door but it is clearly locked. You remember what the owner said and try all sorts of ways to open the locked door. You punch in a set of random numbers into the keypad, your press your hand on the finger-print sensor, you look into the retinal scanner – but the locked door remains unlocked even after hours of trying everything conceivable to open it. Eventually the owner turns up to see how you have settled in to his holiday home. Before you can retell him about all your vain efforts to unlock the door (and he is assuming that you have only just arrived), he walks up the door, lifts the door mat, picks up the key, hands it to you, you put it in the lock and without even turning it your hear each of the locking mechanisms of door undo their bolts and the door opens!

The ‘mat principle’ of accomplishing difficult things is simply this: it’s easy when you know how. Without knowing how to do something, doing that something is very difficult! A few months ago Kim and I had to go to Victoria. I had booked a car with my usual rent-a-car business. When I walked into their office the lady asked me, “Would you like an up-grade?” I excitedly allowed them to upgrade us into a brand new X5 Hybrid BMW SUV. I was given a thingy and told where I would find the car. As long as I had the thingy, the car would start and would be able to drive it they assured me. I got the car, wiped the drool from the corners of my mouth and sat in the car. It had 27kms on the odometer! I pushed what I thought was the start button, dash lights turned on but the car didn’t start! Maybe you have to push it twice I thought. So I pushed the start button again and dash lights turned off. Oh, maybe this is just the dash lights start button? But where’s the engine start button. Unable to see any other start button, I pushed the one and only start button again. This procedure went on for some time as Kim and I sat in the undercover airport rental car park. Then a thought occurred to me: Hybrid. What if the car had actually started each time I have pressed the start button. This time, after pressing the start button I eased my foot of the brake pedal to see what would happen. The car moved! But it moved absolutely silently. It was a hybrid car and it was running on its electric motors rather than its petrol motor! I wish I had known this before I got in this new car. It’s amazing how easy things are when you have been shown how to do it or to understand it. 

¶ “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.
Deuteronomy 30:11

THE MOST DIFFICULT THING NOW MADE EASY

The most impossibly difficult thing that any person could do is to make themselves sinless and therefore righteous in the eyes of God. In ancient times men like Job pondered this question (Job 9:2). These ancients were aware of how holy, just, good, and righteous God was. They also knew that compared with God they were unclean, sinful, selfish, sinners. Even though God instigated the temporary practice of animal sacrifices to remind these ancients of their true spiritual condition before Him, these bloody sacrifices never cleansed anyone’s consciences of the guilt and shame brought about by their sins (Heb. 9:9). This problem remained unsolved until God Himself took on human flesh and became one of us. He lived a sinless life and then laid down His life as the perfect sacrifice for sins of all mankind who turn to Him and receive His pardon. His sacrifice of His life now cleanses the repentant human heart from the guilt and shame of our sins (Heb. 9:14). The key to unlock this previously unlockable door — that so many people have tried to open with religion, good works, church attendance, better education, or Eastern mysticism, but have failed — is found “under the mat” and is called faith. It is our faith (our trust) in what Christ has done for us that opens the most important of Life’s Doors: the door that leads to eternal life in God’s presence. This is why Christ said that He was the Door.

¶ So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.
John 10:7, 9

Under the mat God has put “the key” to unlock the previously unlockable door: even this is a gift from God: faith.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing;
it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9

Even finding the key under the mat is the result of us crying out to God for mercy and forgiveness. These kinds of prayers often sound like, “God help me!” “God, please forgive me.” “God, I need You.”

“God, I acknowledge that I am a sinner. I thank You that You have sent Your Son to be my sacrifice for my sins. Please cleanse me from my sin. I receive Your offer of forgiveness and I want to live a new life with Your help. Amen.”

Amen indeed. I hope that each of us can help someone ‘find the key under the mat’ that can open the door to peace with God which results in them finding the purpose for their life and the meaning behind every setback in life. The principle of God enabling us to do previously difficult things also carries over into many of things that He will enable us to do once we have opened the Door of Salvation. This is the testimony of every person who came to faith in Christ and then helped to change the world in some amazing way. As you walk with Christ and He leads you to a locked door, you might want to start your quest to unlock it by checking to see if there’s a mat at the foot of the door and whether God has placed the next key of faith there for you.

Your pastor,

Andrew

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ETERNAL LIFE IS NOT MERELY A MATTER OF TIME

Caleb was baptised a couple of weeks ago. Whenever we baptise a new believer we always ask them to share their testimony, and while each of our baptism candidates on the day Caleb was baptised gave inspirational testimonies, many people considered Caleb’s testimony one of the best they had ever heard.

Caleb is 11-years-old. He shared his story of being raised by a mum and dad who taught him the truth of God’s Word and to love God. He then shared that his testimony could be summed up by his favourite bible verse, John 3:16 — which is probably also the most favourite verse of most Christians today. In the years ahead, Caleb will come to increasingly understand more about the depth of his favourite verse—in deeper and richer ways. Of course, the beauty of John 3:16 is that it is plain and simple enough for even a young person to have their life changed by it. A child can well understand that in John 3:16 God is inviting all people to turn to His Son as their Saviour by simply trusting in Him and that this qualifies a person to avoid hell and to enjoy heaven for eternity. 

What Caleb will one day come to appreciate about John 3:16, is that when it refers to eternal life it is not just speaking about where a person goes after they die, or even for how long they will be there. Caleb will come to appreciate that eternal life is a part of the dimension where God dwells; it is where Christ ultimately dealt with all human sin, and that eternal life reflects each of God’s attributes.

The opening four words of this verse tell us something profound about God. It does not say, For the gods so loved. At the time John 3:16 was written, the Greco-Romans had already developed many mythical gods (some of which we find referred to in Acts 14:12-13). These man-made gods were selfish, capricious, vengeful, sexually immoral, and indifferent to the plight of humans. But the One and True God so loved. A few years after John had written John 3:16, he wrote to the Ephesian churches an echo of John 3:16 when he described this love of God and what it involved:

In this the love of God was made manifest among us,
that God sent His only Son into the world,
so that we might live through Him. In this is love,
not that we have loved God but that He loved us
and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
First John 4:9-10

While God is the subject of John 3:16, the world is the object of it. The pagan gods of the Greco-Roman world were largely territorial. But the God of John 3:16 is the God of the whole world. He alone is worthy and glory and the credit for creating everything. Unlike the territorial gods of the Apostle John’s gentile world, the True God actually cared for people—but just with mere sympathy—but with an unconditional practical love for all people: the world. While the pagan gods could be cajoled into assisting a human if the right sacrifice or ceremony was offered, the love that the True God has for everyone around the world (including those not yet born) even extends to those who despise Him and wilfully disobey Him!

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person
—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—
but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:7-8 

The false gods of the Greco-Roman world were not givers. They were takers. They demanded things of people. But the True God is a giver. The God of John 3:16 is not a minimalist giver. He is a generous, lavish, giver. All that anyone could rightly give Him is their thanks.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights,
with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1:17

It was claimed that the Greco-Roman gods sired earthly children after having sex with human women. Allegedly, Caesar Augustus was sired by Zeus. This is why, just above Caesarea-Philippi, near the beginning of the assent up Mount Hermon, there was a temple to Caesar Augustus where he was worshiped as the son of Zeus. But the True Son of God was not sired as the result of fornication or lustful misadventure by a wayward deity. He took on the form of a physical human (“a zygote”) with the genetic material of Mary’s ovum. She was a virgin when she miraculously conceived Him, and importantly, she was also a descendant of King David.

¶ Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.  And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
Matthew 1:18-21

Significantly, it was not this event which made God a father. John 3:16 states that God sent His Son –  that is, God the Father was eternally the Father and therefore must have always had an eternal Son. He was sending His Son, not someone who would become His Son. Early in the fourth century there was a monk, by the name of Arius, who taught that Jesus was a created being and was formally Michael the Archangel. The Church called its second ecumenical council to discuss whether this was a heresy (a false and dangerous teaching). Eventually, it a young north African bishop’s assistant, Athanasius, who convinced the council meeting at Nicaea that Arius was wrong and this doctrine (which “Jehovah’s Witnesses” today perpetuate) was heresy. His arguments for demonstrating this included pointing out that if God is the Eternal Father, He must have had an Eternal (uncreated, always existed, self-sufficient) Son. The result of the council’s decision was the Nicene Creed.  The fact that God the Father had always been in relationship with His Son, and that together they had also share am eternal relationship with the Holy Spirit 

Do you say of Him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world,
‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
John 10:36

John 3:16 announces a remarkable offer. Whosoever may approach the throne of God and seek mercy, pardon, and forgiveness for their sins! It doesn’t matter what anyone has done, how many times they have done it, who knows what they’ve done, or how many they have hurt, they can still come humbly before God and accept that the punishment they deserve has been paid for by Christ. As a result, they will live beyond the grave when Christ raises from dead all those who have turned to Him for pardon. 

For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son
and believes in Him should have eternal life,
and I will raise Him up on the last day.”
John 6:40

To believe in is to put trust in. For a Hebrew trust resulted in action. All anyone has to do to become a follower of Christ is believe in Him. The action this produces is confession of guilt and a request for pardon. This was assurance that Jesus gave the penitent thief on the cross beside Him. This thief clearly did not have any opportunity to do anything particularly religious to deserve God’s pardon in his final hours of life.

The consequence of rejecting God’s offer of eternal pardon is to eternally perish. C.S. Lewis described this rejection of God’s offer of salvation as being eternally confined to perpetual loneliness surrounded by others who were also eternally isolated from others in the doom of eternal loneliness and abandonment. But this need not be the case. But it is the risk that anyone takes in rejecting God’s offer of eternal pardon which can only be accepted in this life.

And these will go away into eternal punishment,
but the righteous into eternal life.”
Matthew 25:46

The kind of new life that a forgiven, pardoned, adopted, newly-identified, follower of Christ receives is described as eternal life. It is the kind of life that God enjoys. It is a life of perfect contentment, perfect fulfilment, perfect happiness, perfect peace, and perfect bliss. It brings a child of God into the full expression of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) for eternity. It is not about time or place –  but relationship with God. It is a dimension that only God and those He authorises can move into and out of (which explains how some heavenly creatures can be sent from God’s presence into this dimension of time and space). It also explains how Christ’s death on the Cross meant that He could eternally atone for the sins of mankind (even those yet to be committed) because He could present His life as an atonement for sin in the eternal dimension and then return into His lifeless-body on Resurrection Sunday in this dimension all those years ago. Yes Caleb, there will be much more that you will come to appreciate about your favourite bible verse over the coming years.

The beauty of John 3:16 is that it is so simple it can be understood even by a child; and yet, as a believer’s knowledge of God and His Word grows, he or she will come to discover that there is a wealth of spiritually-satisfying treasure to be mined! In its simplest form, Jesus died so that all those who turn to Him in trust will go to heaven after leaving this life. Dig a little deeper though, and you also discover that the eternal life on offer is not merely about a location (‘heaven’) or a duration of time—but a quality of life and status of existence that elevates the believer into a glorified state with God Himself (Rom. 8:17; 1John 3:2). Our lives are now the training ground for our status as co-regents and co-rulers with Christ over all of His redeemed creation (1Cor. 6:2-3)! 

But, as it is written,“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him”
First Corinthians 2:9

Your pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.