Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], April 2021]

The story that humanity has most believed in is that life is better when we are in charge. It’s the oldest Alternative Fact, and we fall for it time and time again. Have you?

On Sunday we started our new teaching series, ‘Alternative Facts’. It’s based on a phrase that was used by the Trump press team a few years ago and the idea being that alternative facts are telling a different story. You may view a situation or occasion like this but we view it like that. You are offering alternative facts. Actually in life we all sign up to, we believe in, alternative facts, a different story about who we are and the world that we live in. For us who are maybe a people of faith it’s about the sort of God that we believe in.

There’s an occasion right in the beginning of the Bible, the first book of the Bible, Genesis, where we hear how God created the universe and the world that we live in, and when you get a couple of chapters in, we’re introduced to a serpent who is called the most crafty of all the creatures created. He goes to the first humans. Adam and Eve, and offers them alternative facts. He goes to them and says to them – to Eve – ‘surely God hasn’t said that you can’t eat of any tree in the garden?’ and Eve corrects him because God had told them that they could eat of any tree in the garden of Eden apart from one tree – the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God said that ‘if you eat of this tree you will die’.

The serpent said ‘Look, you’re not going to die; it’s just that God wants to keep all the power to himself, to keep you little. You don’t need to stay like that. Eat of this tree and you will be like God yourself.’ He offers alternative facts, a different story where God is power-hungry, God is a tyrant, God is a liar, God wants to keep humanity small and ignorant. The thing is, Eve believed the serpent, eats the fruit, passes it on to Adam who also has a try himself.

What we see in Genesis is the downward spiral of the first half of humanity deciding that they are gods; they decide to take control of their own lives, of their own destiny. We see humanity becoming progressively more evil, more separated from their creator, further away from who God intended them to be.

As you read through the Bible in its entirety you see this spiral again and again and again despite maybe a few pin-pricks of light in the Biblical narrative of people who actually had the heart of God, like king David, who actually listened to God, who did what God had asked of them. Actually in the vast majority of cases humanity rejected God, they believed a different story, they signed up to alternative facts and they became the king of their lives.

I heard it said recently that the difference between a convert to Jesus Christ and someone who is a disciple of Jesus Christ is that a disciple has made Jesus king, that Jesus is lord of their lives, that they make their decisions, they choose the direction not on their wants or desires but on what God, what Jesus wants of their life; the place where they are being guided to by God.

That’s a real challenge, isn’t it? Who is king of your life? Who’s in charge, who makes the decisions?. Do you do want you want to do? Do you do what makes you feel right? Do you do those things that are based on the story that you have signed up to? How do you chose what you spend your money on, the job that you take, the places that you live? Is it based on you, or is it based on God’s calling on your life? Do you ever seek to know or understand what God’s calling is on your life.

You see, in that Biblical story of humanity there is one man that didn’t sign up to the alternative story offered by the devil, by Satan, by the serpent, and that man was Jesus, and you can read in the Gospel stories of how just before he started his earthly ministry he goes out to the wilderness and it says that he is tempted, he is tested by the devil. He is sold a different story, he is offered power and authority, he is offered the chance to be his own king, and Jesus says ‘No!’.

Jesus offers us the same opportunity, that same choice to say ‘No’ to Satan, to say ‘No’ to the lies spoken about God and the lies spoken about us, to say ‘No’ to being king of our own lives, in the words of Frank Sinatra, ‘to do it my way’ and instead find out the joy and the fullness of living a life under God’s kingship, God’s rule rather than our own.

What choice have you made, and what choice will you make?

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[1] YouTube link: Who’s In Charge of Your Life?
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