The Beauty of His Story: A Conclusion

It's time to wrap up our The Beauty of His Story series.

And I think it's fitting that this wrap-up is coming at Christmastime.

The most beautiful thing about this story God is writing is this: He has entered into the story with us.

He is not just some distant author setting a plot into motion and letting us figure out how to live within it. He's been at work throughout the story, providing light and hope, bringing freedom, teaching us how to be good. But He didn't stop there. He knew that this story needed a hero, someone who would rescue us completely from the opposing forces. So He wrapped Himself in human flesh and took on the role that no one else could play.

This is perhaps the thing that amazes me most about Christmas. The boundless God of the universe taking on the boundaries of humanness just so He could rescue a bunch of messed up people. He could have let the story play out without His help, but He knew we could never survive. Instead, Jesus came to be the hero, to fight for light and goodness and freedom and hope and life to win out over darkness and evil and bondage and despair and death.

So what does this tell us about our Author?

• He is good: The Author of this story is on the side of light and freedom and life. Although He allows evil to exist within His story, He is also at work to overcome it. He sent His Son to defeat it. He empowers us to fight against it. In all of this, we see His goodness.
• He is gracious: Throughout the story, we see countless examples of God providing freedom and life to people who have turned their backs on Him. It is true of every person who has placed their faith in Him. Instead of leaving us to our own devices, He graciously carried out a plan to rescue and redeem us.
• He is just: We have talked quite a bit about what will happen at the end of this story-- God will bring our Enemy to justice. Satan will be vanquished and suffer for everything he has done in his efforts to destroy us. In this story, the bad guy WILL lose.

Yes, there will be times when we feel we have no idea where the story is headed. Yes, there will be times when all the dark and evil things seem to be winning. Yes, there will be times we feel utterly without hope.

But we have to remember that those times are not the end of the story. We have to trust that the Author of our story is good. We have to believe that He is continually working to bring light and freedom and life into the midst of our darkness and bondage and death. He already sent us a Hero who defeated Satan. He already determined the end of the story. Regardless of what's happening around us, that will never change. Let that fill you with hope this Christmas.

The Beauty of His Story: Hope & Despair

If you're perfect, raise your hand.

I'd be willing to bet that none of you are raising your hands right now.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that most of you are listing all the things that keep you from being perfect. There's a voice in your head reminding you of every mistake, every failure, every wrong turn. It's a voice you hear quite often, maybe even every day. Let me assure you: you aren't the only one this voice speaks to.

Despair

As I've stated a number of times already in this series, we have an adversary: Satan. He lives and works in total opposition to God. Where God creates, Satan destroys. Where God brings light, Satan seeks to bring darkness. When God brings us back to life, Satan tries to keep us from being fully alive.

Through a constant whispering in our ears, Satan uses his voice to remind us of who we used to be. The voice speaks through many channels--society, the people of influence in our lives (family, friends, teachers, etc), our own hearts--but the message is always the same: You haven't changed. You're still the same person. Look what you just did! How can you be a Christian and still be doing that?

Quickly the joy of being made alive again begins to drown in despair as we realize our own weakness and imperfection. The Bible calls us to perfection and holiness because of God's perfection and holiness. Satan delights in showing us just how far we are from achieving it. He points out sin after sin, heaping up shame and cackling with delight as we collapse under the weight of it. Despair begins to rule and we cry out with Paul, "Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?" (Romans 7:24, NLT)

Hope

Fortunately that question has an answer. His name is Jesus. And He is our hope.

Jesus died on the cross as the perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did what we couldn't do. And it worked. The cross = mission accomplished! If you have placed your faith in Jesus, you stand forgiven in this moment, no matter what you did last night or this morning or five minutes ago. You ARE forgiven. You were forgiven in the moment you first asked Jesus to save you from sin. And each time you have sinned since then, all you've had to do was go back to Him so He could remind you that you are forgiven. And that holds true for every time you will sin in the future.

We don't have to despair because we have Jesus.

But we also have the Holy Spirit.

God gives the Holy Spirit to every believer (Ephesians 1:13) and the Holy Spirit gives us victory in the battle against sin: You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world (1 John 4:4, NLT). The battle will be long and hard and you will often feel exhausted, but you already have the victory! There is HOPE: I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life (1 John 5:13, NLT). And with that hope, that assured confidence in your status before God, you can overcome the despair.

What does that look like practically?

It looks like remembering the Gospel every day: because Jesus died, you are forgiven.

It looks like confessing your sin: bring it into the light so the Spirit can help you deal with it.

It looks like choosing to believe the truth: though you feel broken and dirty, God sees you as clean and whole.

There will be a new heaven and a new earth where we no longer have to fight sin, but in the meantime, you are already new (2 Corinthians 5:17). Choose to live in the truth of that, to be the new person God created you to be. And when you sin, don't despair. You are already forgiven. Let that build in you a hope that leads to victory over your sin.

The Beauty of His Story: Death & Life

So far we have established that Satan works to keep us from being good and to keep us in bondage.

The truth is, we're even worse off than that.

Because of our sin, we're dead (Ephesians 2:1).

Death

We see it in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the fruit. God casts them out of the Garden so they wouldn't have access to the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22-24). Prior to sinning, they had access to eternity (physical life) in God's presence (spiritual life). After sinning, they had an expiration date (physical death) and had to live outside of God's presence (spiritual death). 

Paul explains later (Romans 5:12) that Adam and Eve's sin brought death to the whole world. That includes you and me. We may be physically alive (until we die), but we're spiritually dead.

We're talking totally and completely dead here, folks. Not the "mostly dead" that Westley experiences in The Princess Bride. There's no magical chocolate we can swallow to reverse the process. The word used in Ephesians 2:1 means "dead; useless; ineffective."

So what can you do when you're dead?

Nothing.

And that's just what Satan wants. The best way to make you ineffective for the Kingdom of God is to make you dead.

Life

Here's the thing: when you're dead, you can't do anything to make yourself alive again. Just like being made good or being set free, being made alive is something God has to do for you.

And thankfully He did just that. He sent Jesus to die so we could be made alive.

Jesus' death wipes out our sin which is what causes us to be dead (Romans 6:23). When we choose to let God make us alive, our sinful self gets crucified with Jesus (Romans 6:6), wiping away its power and its effects in our lives, including death.

But Jesus didn't stay dead. He came back to life again. And because He came back to life, we get to come back to life, too! This means physical life in the future when we get to spend eternity in God's presence. But it also means spiritual life now. It means that instead of a life of slavery to the power of sin, we get to live a life of power from God, the power to be who He created us to be and do what He created us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

So here's the question: Are you alive or are you dead? If the answer is "dead," all you have to do is ask, and God will make you alive again. Life is a free gift because of what Jesus did on the cross. And I don't know about you, but I can't think of a better gift.

The Beauty of His Story: Bondage & Freedom

Photo by Trevor Leyenhorst (Used via Creative Commons)

How many of you have watched the movie "The Ten Commandments"?

If your family was anything like mine, you probably gathered around the TV to watch it when one of the major networks aired it every year at Easter. I'm still not sure if it was the thrill of watching the movie or getting to stay up past my bedtime, but it was always a much anticipated event.

The story of the exodus, the moment when God freed Israel from slavery to Egypt, is perhaps one of the greatest moments in God's story. It's quite the epic story complete with burning bushes, an evil king, plagues, and the parting of the Red Sea. It's a story of God coming through and delivering His people from bondage.

Fear Leads to Oppression

I find the beginning of this story intriguing. Famine in Canaan (the Promised Land) drives Jacob and his family to Egypt. Because Joseph (one of Jacob's sons) is in a position of power, Jacob's family is able to settle in Egypt, finding provision and protection. This provision and protection allows for the birth of many children and grandchildren, and so the nation of Israel becomes "extremely powerful" (Exodus 1:7). Eventually, Joseph's generation dies and a new king comes to power who knows nothing about Joseph or his legacy. He sees the Israelites as a threat: "Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more." (Exodus 1:9-10, NLT)

Because of their fear, the Egyptians begin to oppress and eventually enslave the Israelites. Egypt decides that whips and chains and ruthless demands are the answer, the way to keep Israel from fighting against them. And it works (until God steps in). In all the time the Israelites are slaves, they never seek freedom on their own. They cry out to God and wait for a deliverer.

Satan is Afraid of You

In the same way that Egypt seeks to limit Israel's power through bondage and slavery, Satan seeks to limit your power through bondage to anything and everything but God. Much like the Philistines who sought to remove Samson's strength so they could tie him up (Judges 16:5), Satan wants to tie us down and subdue us so we can't accomplish what God has purposed for our lives. He does this by leading us into slavery to a number of things:

• Sin: "You let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin." (Romans 6:19, NLT) A few verses later, Paul talks about the shame that comes as a result. We sin; we feel ashamed; we sin some more; we feel more ashamed. It's a never-ending cycle that leads us deeper into bondage, fashioning chains we could never hope to break.
• False gods: "Before you Gentiles knew God, you were slaves to so-called gods that do not even exist." (Galatians 4:8, NLT) We worship all kinds of things instead of God: financial security, entertainment, relationships, etc. We decide these things are more important than God or can provide better than He can. So we become slaves to them, seeking to serve them so they will be good to us.
• Whatever controls you: "For you are a slave to whatever controls you." (2 Peter 2:19b, NLT) What controls you? Fear? Money? Lust? Food? Your emotions? Whatever it is, you are a slave to it.

When we are slaves, we lose the ability to be what God created us to be. We are restrained by the ropes and chains that bind us. We are locked in prison cells, unable to effectively love and serve the people around us. It's exactly what Satan wants. And he's pretty good at making it happen.

The Time of the Lord's Favor Has Come

Fortunately, the story does not end with us stuck in slavery. Eventually, God sent a deliverer to Israel and led them out of Egypt, out of slavery and into freedom. He has done the same for us.

Jesus came to set us free. It's part of His mission statement, one of the main objectives of His time on earth.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,

that the blind will see,

that the oppressed will be set free,

and that the time of the Lord's favor has come.

(Luke 4:18-19, NLT, emphasis added)

In fact, freedom is such an integral part of Jesus' ministry that it gets mentioned twice! We can't truly have a relationship with God until we've been set free, until the chains are broken and the prison door is opened.

So how do we get freedom? By believing we can have it through Jesus. When we spend time in His Word, we come to know the truth and the truth sets us free. The truth is this: through His death and resurrection, Jesus bought our freedom. All we have to do is ask and He will break our chains and unlock our prison doors. 

After that, it's up to us to choose to live in our freedom by getting up and walking away from the sin and the false gods and the things that control us (Galatians 5:1 and 5:13). We won't be perfect at it. We won't be slaves to sin anymore (Romans 6:22), but we will still sin. There will be a lot of stumbling and falling. But there will always be grace because freedom does not require our perfection; Jesus' perfection is enough. And because of that grace we can continue to put one foot in front of the other, walking in freedom toward God and away from sin.

That is the Good News: No matter what sins created the links in the chains that have kept you in bondage, Jesus is still extending to you the opportunity to be free. Take it. And make Satan afraid of you once more.

What do you need Jesus to set you free from?

The Beauty of His Story: Good & Evil

My most favorite epic stories (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Gladiator, Independence Day, Doctor Who... I could go on forever) all include that most basic storytelling element: good versus evil. There's a hero (good) and antagonist (evil) who stand in opposition to each other, each fighting to get his (or her) own way as we read or watch with baited breath waiting to see who will win.

God, being the original and ultimate author, writes a story with this same central theme. There is both good and evil present here (as watching any news show will tell you). And they stand in opposition to each other, each fighting to get his way.

Now, you probably already know this, but God is good. We seem to have a hard time believing this (myself included), but it doesn't change the facts. Throughout the Bible, God is celebrated as being good because what He does gives us evidence of it. David says it quite often:

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good!

His faithful love endures forever."

1 Chronicles 16:34 (NLT)

"Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!"

Psalm 34:8 (NLT)

"You are good and do only good..."

Psalm 119:68 (NLT)

God is faithful and His love endures forever; therefore, God is good. God provides protection to those who seek it; therefore, God is good. God does only good; therefore, God is good. God cares for His children; therefore, God is good. God rescues His people from physical slavery (in Egypt) and spiritual slavery (more on that in another post); therefore, God is good.

Satan, on the other hand, is evil. Again, I'm pretty sure you already knew that. If you read my post about him a few weeks ago, you probably got that picture pretty clearly from his bent toward destruction. The Bible describes him as a prowling lion (1 Peter 5:8) and the father of lies (John 8:44). Nothing he does is good.

So how does this battle of good versus evil play out in God's story?

God creates the world and man and declares it all good (Genesis 1). Satan swoops in and leads Adam and Eve to eat the fruit. Now man knows the difference between good and evil and we have a choice between the two. Satan keeps working and Cain kills Abel. In a matter of generations, evil has become so great that God decides to wipe out what He created and start over (Genesis 6:5-7). But Satan keeps on fighting, leading us farther and farther along the path of evil that he seems to be winning. It gets to the point where only God can truly be described as good (Luke 18:19). Paul spends the first few chapters of Romans describing just how far from God we really are:

"Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy."

Romans 1:29-31 (NLT)

It certainly looks like Satan is winning.

But he's not the only one fighting for his way.

See God has already stepped in delivered the fatal blow. When Jesus died on the cross, He provided the opportunity for us to trade our evil for His good (Romans 3:23-24). We talked last time about God creating new hearts for us. These are good hearts. They are hearts that allow us to do the good works we were meant to do (Ephesians 2:10) and produce good fruit (Colossians 1:10) because the Holy Spirit is working in them. Every time we do, we wage war against Satan and evil: "Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good." (Romans 12:13, NLT) 

You know how you cheer each time the hero chooses to do the right thing? Yeah, we've got people cheering us on, too. It's all the people who have gone ahead of us, who have already run the race. They're cheering for good to conquer evil, because all the best stories end that way. SPOILER ALERT: Good totally kicks evil's butt in this story. Satan's going to get thrown in a pit of fire and be tormented forever.

So while we strive for little victories in the war against evil, let's find strength in the fact that God's already got the major victory in the bag.

What are some of your most recent victories over evil?