The greatest event - Midweek Message 13th May

Dear Friends

The one thing that unites all Christians, now and throughout history, is our joyful assurance that the greatest thing that ever happened on our planet is the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. The message of the gospel is quite simply the best news ever!

So says Rebecca Manley Pippert in the opening lines of the introduction to her latest book Stay Salt. It’s quite a statement containing quite a claim and worth spending a little time pondering. Think about it. If I asked you – or if you asked your neighbour - or if someone hosted a Television Programme with the question: What is the greatest thing ever to happen on planet earth?, what kind of answer would you give or expect to hear? On one website someone came up with the invention of the wheel and another with humanity’s landing on the moon and there were other interesting suggestions but I genuinely believe Becky Pippert is right: the greatest thing that ever happened on our planet is the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.

Yet it is one thing to affirm it. It is so easy to forget it, even when you say you believe it. It is so easy to live in effect as if it were not true. I know I have often been guilty of both of those but reading that introduction made me consider again why I think it’s true. Let me mention five reasons -not exhaustive - but I hope significant.

Firstly, because it supplies or rather he, Jesus Christ,  supplies meaning and purpose to life in that he remains the best historical and examinable evidence for the existence of God and without God life, all life, is ultimately devoid of meaning and purpose. Without God -  the Creator God, the God of the Bible, the Triune God, the God who has come into our world in Jesus his Son -  life for all of us is as Shakespeare famously said a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing – or as the atheistic philosopher Quentin Smith put it: “The fact of the matter is that the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing”  In contrast to that, Paul, speaking of Jesus, reminds us For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. (Colossians 1:16) This world this universe is not a cosmic accident. You are not an accident. Both it and we have an origin and a purpose in him.

Secondly, Jesus in his person, his words and his actions not only testifies to the existence of God, he confirms that nagging feeling that any  thinking person has as they look out on the world, on humanity, namely, something’s wrong – things, we, as human beings are not as they should be.  In particular when we look at him in the gospels in his large-hearted love, his compassion to the needy, his lack of prejudice, his patience with his disciples,  his care for the weak and the outsider, his integrity, his exposure of hypocrisy and fearless commitment to truth, his passion for the glory of God but also his love for his enemies, his giving of himself, and all he had, to and for others and then set ourselves against him – our self-centred lives, our often petty and wayward desires, our narrow concerns  - you realise how far we have fallen.

But then, thirdly, at the same time because of who he is and particularly because he has done at the cross, there is hope that though as human beings we are broken, we can be mended  - rebellious and guilty as we may be, we can be forgiven because he made it plain he had come not in the first place to condemn but to save – I think of those words that breathe hope into everyone who has ever become aware of their moral and spiritual failure "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Mark 2:17) or again Peter’s summation of what Jesus accomplished on the cross Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. (1 Peter 3:18)

Fourthly, his resurrection means death is not the end. It does not have the last say on our lives. It does not render meaningless anything we have been and done, believed and loved in our time on earth. It is true if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith…your faith is futile; you are still in your sins… and  we are to be pitied more than all men but it is equally and overridingly true  Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.  (1 Corinthians 15:14,17,19,20) If anyone or any worldview is going to bring genuine and lasting hope they must have an answer for death. Jesus is the only one who ever has.

Then following his resurrection, fifthly and finally, his ascension into heaven (Luke 24.51, Acts 1.9), and taking his place of ultimate authority at the right hand of God the Father with the promise of his final return in glory, reminds us that nothing that happens in this world or in our own lives, however painful or puzzling, is outside of his control. As our risen, reigning and returning Lord as well as our sympathetic High Priest (Hebrews 4.14-16) he is the assurance that one day all questions will be answered, all disease and death will be vanquished, all wrongs will be righted and all tears will be wiped away. (Revelation 21.1-5)

Friends, Becky Pippert is right – the greatest thing that ever happened on our planet is the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.  I need to know it. You need to know it, whatever is going on in our lives now or will go on in the future. Or more importantly, we need to know and trust Him and with his help, find ways of making him and this good news known to others,

Yours hopefully in Him

David