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: 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?