SPACE TRAVELERS

#511                                               SPACE TRAVELERS

Scripture  I Peter 3:18 NIV                                                                                      Orig. 8/4/1968

                                                                                                                             Rewr. 11/22/1988

Passage: For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.

Purpose:         Sharing anew the Biblical steps to God’s abundant  life in Christ.  

Keywords:                  Christ as Saviour                   God’s Love                 Separating from Sin

                                    Cross                                       Revival                       Plan of Evangelism

Timeline/Series:         Any

Introduction

            A new interest in outer space came about a few years ago with the marketing of “E.T.”  A fantasy spoke to some need in people to believe that there may be someone else out there.  The homesickness of the small alien touched a vital chord that all of us share.

            The interest in the worlds beyond this planet are genuine.  Efforts are already underway to break the bonds that tie us to earth.  We are not doing a very good job maintaining what we have here, but that drive is galactic.  What we don’t know about what is out there compels us forward.

            A recent article in National Geographic depicts what is ahead.  Plans are already being made for a serious venture toward Mars.  Imagine going to a  place where it will take seven to eight months to reach your destination, a delay of well over a year for the kind of planetary alignment that will make return possible, and then another seven or eight months making the swing toward home. 

            The article discussed some of the specifications required as an agenda for Mars nears.  Can you imagine the difficulties involved in such gigantic plans?  Things get pretty complicated over at our house when we are only making plans to have family in for Thanksgiving.  The logistics of hosting family and friends for a few days is formidable indeed.

            Fortunately, when God formulated the agenda that would bring us to Himself, He didn’t complicate it with insurmountable detail.  We don’t have to be overwrought about food reserves, and time differentials.  There is a way to reach out across time and space, and any other such mediums, to the place where God is.

I.          The First Step is Accepting  God’s Goal of an Abundant Life.  “To bring you to God.”

            This abundant life begins with a knowledge of God.  David’s last, best advice to his son Solomon concerned this knowledge: I Chronicles 28:9 “If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever” (NIV).  Job raised a question that has furnished a dilemma for many: “Canst thou by searching find out God?”  But Jeremiah resolves it for us: Jeremiah 29:13 “Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye search for me with all your heart,”

            Such knowledge comes not of the flesh but of the spirit.  First, the eternal Spirit of God.  John 14:16 “I will pray the father, and he will give you a comforter that he may abide with you forever.”  To know God is to know what He wishes to make known.  We are to be willing receptors.  It is then of the human spirit.

II.         The Second Step is the Admission of a Problem.  “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust.”

            It addresses the reality of sin; it accepts responsibility for one’s own will; it acknowledges God’s transcendence.

            All are created for this “abundant” life.  A sense in which some are elected but none are denied.  Irving Stone, in his biography on Michelangelo The Agony and the Ecstasy1 tells about Michelangelo’s David.  At the quarry he purchases a column cut and blocked for another sculptor, but marred.  Others had looked and rejected, but from this stone of flaws, he sculpted his 17’ statue.  God is able to work His miracle in any life.

            All are free to choose or to deny.  Look at any Biblical believer, he had the freedom to reject.  Any who denied, could have believed.  Isaiah 53:6 “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” 

            The Biblical concept of original sin says only that Adam’s disobedience was placed in circulation, and none of us have managed to protect ourselves from its debilitating influence ever since.  We have not escaped it unscathed, nor can we.

III.       Thus, the Third Step of Accepting God’s Remedy—the Cross.  “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust.”

            Conscience is perceived by many as the criterion for human good.  It did not protect Adam.  The Hebrews were not protected from their Egyptian lords.  It did not prevent serious abuses of power during the middle ages.  It offered no redress to the victims of the wars of this 20th Century.

            When I was a teenager my family lived just a couple of miles from a place on the Tallapoosa River called Horseshoe Bend.  For a lad who had never seen the Mississippi, that was an awesome spectacle.  On a bluff just to the east of the river, the railroad had been laid.  Every spring the talk would turn to the river undermining the railroad.  After the track finally gave way, a reinforcing abutment was built.  Conscience is like the dirt of the bluff that for years kept the river at bay.  But clearly, of itself alone, it just wasn’t enough.

            The solution, the one solution to man’s sin problem, is the cross.  Conscience is a vital ally for good.  But conscience breaks down. In this vein, the cross is the powerful abutment to our conscience.

            We must have confidence in atoning factor.  Thinking of church membership doesn’t help.  Reassurance from perception is no proof.  But a vital relationship with Jesus gives resolve.  I Peter 1:18f  “For as much as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. . . .  24 For all flesh is as grass, . . . but the word of the Lord endureth.”

IV.       The Final Step, then, is to Receive Christ as Saviour.  “That He might bring us to God.”

            The completed action of the cross is defined for us.  In v21 Peter goes on to speak of “the good conscience toward God.”  It is explained in terms of the “resurrection of Jesus.”

            It raises the pertinent question as to which side of the cross we are on.  On the one side is sin and separation.  On that side we stand alone.

            But seeing the cross as we must, from God’s vantage point:  Conscience is not our only ally nor our enemy.  We discover God’s earnest attempt in our behalf.  We know that we do not stand alone.  I Peter 4:1 “Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind:  for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin.”

Conclusion

            The story is told of a stranger who walked into a great London Cathedral while the organist was at practice.  The organ [was] reputed to be one of the world’s finest.  The stranger listened for some time and then asked to be allowed to play.  The organist of course refused.  The console was sensitive. It could be ruined.  The stranger, however, was insistent, finally identifying himself as Felix Mendelssohn.

            The organist, recognizing the name, stepped aside and listened as his genius poured through the keys.  People came in to listen.  As [Mendelssohn] stood to leave, the organist said more to himself than to others gathered, “Oh, the Master was here.  What if I had not let him play?”

1Stone, I.  (2001.) The Agony and the Ecstasy. (Reprint.) Random House.

Stone:  https://www.amazon.com/Agony-Ecstasy-Irving-Stone/dp/0099416271/ref=monarch_sidesheet_image