DAILY DEVOTIONAL – August 27, 2019
“Hardly Simple, or, Simply Hard?”
Prayer: Jesus, as Your Word tells us, You are the author and perfecter of our faith. In Your mercy, give us the eyes and ears of simple faith to hear Your Word of Promise and receive the gift of eternal life. Amen.
Scripture: 1 John 5:10-12
10 All who believe in the Son of God know in their hearts that this testimony is true. Those who don’t believe this are actually calling God a liar because they don’t believe what God has testified about his Son.
11 And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.
Devotion – “Hardly Simple, or Simply Hard?”
The Bible is a book written over the course of more than 2,000 years, with 66 books comprised of a wide range of literary genres and written by upwards of 40 different authors spanning across 3 continents. The Bible speaks authoritatively about the past present and future and records the history of a people and a culture and a world that often times seems foreign to us. Yet, as big and as sometimes intimidating as the Bible may seem to be, it’s message is actually very simple. It’s the same message communicated in innumerable ways on every single page. The message of the Bible is so simple and straightforward that a child can understand it; in fact Jesus said the Truth of the Bible can only be received and understood with the heart and mind of a little child.
In our passage for today’s devotional, I think John summarizes all of Scripture in a beautifully simple and powerful way. “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son [Jesus Christ]. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.”
The eternal Truth of the Everlasting and Eternal God who sees all and knows all and is above all, is that simple. If you have Jesus, if your faith and trust is placed in no one and nothing but Him, you have eternal life. Equally True and equally simple: if you do not have Jesus, if you have no faith in Jesus as the only way to salvation and the only way to God, then you do not have life.
Just because the message of God’s salvation in Christ is simple to understand, doesn’t mean it is easily received. The heart of mankind is corrupt, selfish, wicked and refuses to admit the truth that all men know in their conscience; that we are all broken and evil and sinful by nature, and if we ever hope to see God and know God and be saved, we need God’s mercy and love. The heart of men is prideful and doesn’t want to admit it is not in control, and that when we do things our way, it inevitably ends up in nothing but pain and destruction. We are 100% reliant on God’s undeserved mercy and forgiveness in Christ if we ever have a hope of finding True peace and joy in this life, and life after death.
Every human heart, every conscience, knows this to be true, but that’s exactly the problem, every human heart. The Good News of the Gospel is that God has paid for the sins of the world and taken the punishment we deserve upon Himself in Jesus Christ. Every single person has had their sins paid for by Christ. That is the free gift of God and He has given that gift and invitation of salvation to every single person. However, although God has given that gift to every person, God is not a loving dictator. Having made us in His creative image, God does not force salvation on anyone. Those who do not have Jesus and do not have life, do not have life and salvation because that is what they have chosen; despite God’s testimony to them through His Word, through the conscience He put in us and even through Creation, many people will spend their whole lives denying God’s grace and mercy and refusing to open the free gift God has already given to them.
Although the message of the Bible is simple, it is a hard message. Hard because of hard hearts towards God. Hard because of the reality of sin, and the consequences that sin has brought, and the death sin will bring.
You know, it’s not very popular today to talk about the simple message of the Bible; the simple message that we all deserve Hell, that we all deserve to be eternally separated from God, that all the misery and suffering and evil and wickedness and death in the world is not only our fault, but by nature, it is what our hearts desire. Jesus Himself said it very plainly in Matthew 15:19, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.”
In fact, it is because of this wickedness of man that Jesus also said in Matthew 7, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” The gate to salvation is narrow, because despite sinful mankind’s insistence that you can get to God however you want, Jesus made it clear that He is the only way to the Father. It’s hard because in our sinfulness, we want to be gods, we want to be in control, we want to have it our way, and receiving the salvation of God in Christ first means repenting of sin and admitting our way is hopeless. Jesus makes the promise of peace and satisfaction and eternal life and proved to be faithful in His promises it by rising from the dead.
Our Lord Jesus who wept over death and unbelief, and who willingly suffered on the cross to defeat death and give faith, told us the simple Truth, the unfortunate Truth that many more than He or we would like, will choose the broad road of sin and destruction that leads only to eternal death and separation from God rather than the narrow road of life that leads to eternal life with God. God in Christ knew that the people of His very own creation would come to mock Him, spit on Him, beat Him, crucify Him, kill Him and flatly refuse to believe in Him despite His Words of Truth and miracles that pointed to the Truth. But knowing all of this heartbreak didn’t stop Jesus from willingly picking up your cross and my cross and bearing our sins and dying our death and raising again on the third day to give us new life. Neither did God’s desire for all of mankind to be saved stop Him from preaching the Truth, even when it hurt and wasn’t popular or pretty.
The brilliant theologian C.S. Lewis wrote that it isn’t God who sends us to Hell. Those who go there do so willfully, because they reject Christ’s free pardon for sin and judgment. Lewis writes, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek, find. To those who knock, it is opened.”
The only reason anyone is ever lost, is because they did not seek to find the Truth; the ultimate Truth. Truth isn’t what we want it to be or wish it could be my friends. Truth is Truth. And the Truth is Jesus Christ
Believe in Jesus my friends, and live – and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
