Higher Power: A Way Beyond

Human, the longing, five longings.

So if you've been part of the series, you will be able to follow along with these as they come up.

The longing for belonging, which is totality.

And then once we're belonging as human beings, how do you live?

What's the norm for life?

Is there a norm?

And we've suggested there is.

Sometimes you need to be rescued in this human condition.

Deliverance.

And then we tend to have an anxiety about how we're going to live tomorrow.

So this idea of destiny.

And we've seen how Jesus fulfills all of these human longings wonderfully, every one of them.

And so, tonight we look at the last one.

And this is a really big question.

Why do we exist?

Where are we ultimately going?

Where did we come from?

And it's this magnetic pole, higher power.

Higher power.

And I think to examine the bigness, if bigness is a word, of higher power, we need to go into something very small.

The smallness of humanity.

And when I say small, I mean microscopic.

The human conception moment.

23 chromosomes from dad, and 23 chromosomes from mum, end up giving us a 3 billion character DNA code.

That's pretty impressive, isn't it?

So, every day, in 75 trillion cells which are in you and I, those cells are telling us on this 3 billion character code who we are.

That's amazing.

We learned this when the idea of DNA was discovered in 1953, and we've learned a lot since then.

So, if you were to read this out every second, one character per second, apparently, it would take 96 years to read out the description of who you and I are.

So, that's pretty amazing.

Apparently, 500,000 cells die every 3 seconds inside of us.

They all tell the same story about who we are, and 500,000 are reproduced.

Every one of them carries the code.

Now, DNA is a problem for atheists.

DNA is a problem.

It points towards intelligent design.

It points towards a higher power.

There are people, as I look around, I think Pat might know a little bit about this, but people know a lot more about this than I do.

This next slide shows what DNA sort of looks like, a bunch of letters, a bunch of characters.

And so that is communicating something to the other side, the other chromosomes.

If you put up the next slide, that's a lot easier to follow.

Now, my nose isn't that big, but he's crooked.

So it was personal self-disclosure here in what my chromosomes were working out.

But we can understand that, can't we, because we all understand these letters in the English language, and it's a way to communicate.

It's a message.

Now, the thing about DNA that is hard to comprehend is it's a message too.

But from the very beginning, the first examples of life, how did the two sides understand how to read the language?

Because for a human to exist, these 23 chromosomes come from dad, 23 from mom, but they've got to be able to read each other for it to work.

So, A, G, T, C, it's odd, every living cell.

So, do you get that as a question?

It is a hard one to answer without a higher power, without some sort of instruction book that's been given by someone who was an uncaused first cause.

So, we're talking about the how does God exist question, and we're really thinking about it from the design point of view.

So, we have an immensely complex life, human life.

It's either come from a designer, or it's come from blind chance.

There aren't too many options in there.

It's like someone's either designed this immensely complex thing called human, and that's what our series is about, or, you know, it is like it's just happened over a really long period of time, a bit under 14 billion years.

So, let's sort of press into that a bit.

There's this really interesting idea called the Monkey Theorem.

It came about many decades ago, and the idea came from people who don't believe in a higher power.

They said, well, if you have enough time, anything is possible.

So, this question was raised, an idea.

Could a bunch of monkeys, if they were given enough time, write a Shakespearean sonnet?

Now, is, oh, Virginia's not here.

Can you yell out from there, Virginia, what a Shakespearean sonnet is?

A beautiful poem in the structure of 14 lines could be 6 and 8 and 7 and 7, two big ideas in it.

She's, she's still got it.

She was a head of department on English teacher for years.

She knows what she's talking about.

So, a sonnet is a, I'll just say it's a type of poem, like she described, like a Shakespearean poem, 14 lines in it and 488 characters.

So, let me write that up.

A sonnet, 14 lines, 488 characters.

So, what the idea was, if you put monkeys with a computer, surely, they could come up with a sonnet if they had enough time.

So, literally, the British National Council of Arts put six monkeys, many years ago, in a room with an old school sort of computer, and they gave these monkeys a month.

In a month, they wrote 50 pages of text, and there were no intelligible English words.

So, there was no I or a.

So, to get a one-letter English word, you need a space and then an I and then a space.

So, you need, you've got, if you do the probability, you've got, say, there were 30 characters, 30 keys, you had 30 chances to get a space, 30 chances to get an I or an R, 30 cents chance to get a space again.

So 30 times 30 times 30, which is 1 in 27, 100.

So this sonnet, just one letter and I, 1 in 27,000, that was.

1 in 27,000.

So you'll get excited about this as I keep those into maths, as I keep writing some numbers up.

So I wonder what you reckon the chances are.

So that was 1 in 27,000 of getting a letter.

This idea of monkeys writing a Shakespearean sonnet, 488 characters, what do you reckon that would be?

What's a guess?

What's the chance?

What's the probability of writing 488 characters that make up a sonnet by chance?

Well, if you work it out, it's far bigger than the particles in the universe.

One in the number of the particles in the universe.

Now, I'm no scientist at all, but protons, neutrons, electrons, apparently, the particles are 1 to the power of 80, or 10 to the power of 80.

So, one with 80 zeros next to it is the particles in the universe.

What you would need for that is 10 to the power of 690.

So, that's one with 80 zeros is the particles in the universe.

But the probability of doing 488 characters is 10 to the power of 690.

One with 690 zeros.

Now, again, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to a lot of us.

So, imagine this, you took 10 to the power of 80, one with 80 zeros, and turned every particle in the universe into a computer.

So, you've got that many computers, and you say, I'm going to run a million per second runs through of that 488 characters.

Like, so every computer, are you with me?

No, there's anyone, that's one, one, one is enough.

Thank you, Xander.

So, there's 10 to the power of 80 computers.

They are all running a million trials of 488, try it out, 488 potential sonnets per second.

If you do that for 14 billion years, the history of an expanding universe, you get this many attempts, 10 to the power of 90.

You are 10 to the power of 600 short in attempts.

Are you with me?

To write probability wise a 488 character sonnet, for they're not honestly, this stirs me, it really does.

It's a good argument.

There's 3 billion characters in the DNA.

It's inconceivable to write that 488.

Francis Crick was part of the team who came up with DNA in 1953, got a Nobel Peace Prize for it and stuff.

He was asked, so in 1953, he knew more about DNA than anyone else.

He was asked, because he's not a believer, like, where does this come from?

And he says, it is completely inconceivable that DNA came from Shanks.

3 billion characters linking up in 23 chromosomes each, because you need to understand the language.

And so he was asked, where did it come from?

And he said, my best guess, no joke, extraterrestrial alien life.

That's where it came from.

So, that's not the hassle, guy.

It's just like, okay, where's your evidence for that?

What he is saying is, you need an uncaused first cause, right?

You need a designer.

This world has been designed in such a way, every human being has been designed in such a way, that it is mind-blowing, and we need, we actually need a higher power to make sense of it.

So if you ever think, oh, these fairy tale, fairy, what's it called?

What's in, it's fairy in the sky, fairy in the sky, loving Christians, as though we're the dumb ones.

And I'm not looking at everyone as though we're all Christians and online.

We're not all Christians.

But it takes some faith to believe that there are aliens, and then guess what?

With Francis Crick, I need to say to Francis Crick, I said, where did the aliens have their origin of existence?

You get stuck, don't you?

I'll tell you, you've only got two choices for the origin of everything.

Eternal matter or eternal personhood?

There's either an eternal being who started it, who's intelligent, uncaused first cause, or it's just eternal matter, and you're stuck again with this idea of chance.

It is actually super important to lock in if the universe as an old earth idea is only, it's no more than an expanding big bang, it's no longer than 14 billion years.

You don't have infinite time.

Because a lot of the arguments about infinite time is, oh, if there's forever, you can always roll enough dices and get, you don't actually have time.

So, putting forward the idea to a stacked camp here, a biased group, that there is an intelligent designer, that there is a higher power, and we know from the Bible that this is not a god randomly, or gods, or a force.

We actually know that this god is three in one.

One essence, three persons, father, son, and holy spirit, and he is the uncaused first cause, and he's always been there, and he's always been in relationship.

And through what he accomplished in sending his son Jesus, he made a way for us to belong as humans.

A way to live, a way to be rescued, and a way to control the future by trusting in a good shepherd.

And he is the higher power that we long for.

He really is.

It makes complete sense.

And I would put it to you that you have a hole inside of you that needs to be filled with the knowledge of God.

And drawn home, there's a beacon in us that just wants to get home.

And that's what I think the five magnetic poles really speak to.

So, our text that Fiona read for us is 1 John 1, 7.

And I think it's...

As I was studying this week, this message and the ideas, it struck me that it's just the best text you could have about the five magnetic poles.

We've based it on this book by Daniel Strange called Making Faith Magnetic, and Ben said to me, Good luck this week.

He doesn't give you much in the chapter.

And that would be true.

So, this is not really based too much from Daniel Strange's work, but this passage encapsulates all five poles.

So, let me read it again.

That which was from the beginning, Paul writes, to a smallest church in Turkey in the first century.

John writes, not Paul, John writes, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life.

The life appeared, we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.

They were witnesses, right, of God in human flesh, Jesus.

So that you also may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father, with His Son, Jesus Christ.

We write this to make our joy complete.

This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you, God is light.

In Him, there is no darkness at all.

If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.

Jesus fulfills the longings of the human heart.

So firstly, John's writing to this church.

He's got a few problems, actually, and he says in verse three, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.

Christians belong to one another.

This early message, John is saying, you guys have a fellowship that is beautiful.

We are caught up in the vine.

We've talked about being in the body life when we have faith in Christ.

It really matters.

We get the totality we seek.

Amen.

There is belonging.

I've spoken to a bunch of brand new Christians in the last year.

And just in conversation, it's been consistent.

People say, I'm amazed how much I feel a sense of belonging.

Like, I just feel like I'm part of something that I've longed for.

It's like the classic language.

I'm just hearing it, not even sort of seeking it.

It's just people are saying, I am experiencing a sense of belonging in church community.

It's wonderful.

And so that's what John tells us.

Our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son.

We are together.

And this passage is so about norm, isn't it?

Like the passage says in verse six, God is light, in him there's no darkness at all.

If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

There is a way to live.

There's light and there's dark.

That's what John is writing to this early church.

God has not left us in the dark, as it were.

He's given us a way to live following Jesus.

And in deliverance, is there a way we can be rescued from sin?

Yes.

That's what Ben preached on a few weeks ago.

That's the greatest thing we need to be delivered from in this life.

The passage says, as so many parts of the New Testament, yes, the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin.

There is a way for us to be delivered.

Faith in Christ, that's what the Bible teaches, delivers us from the consequence of sin because Jesus died on a cross, paying the price of our disobedience.

Hallelujah.

I praise God.

That's the truth.

He rose from the grave.

And when we put our faith in him, our sins are forgiven.

We're rescued, delivered.

And then fourth, destiny, verse 2, he writes, We proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and has appeared to us.

And we talked about this last week.

Christ is eternal life, which means he's the start and he's the finish, eternal.

He's always been there.

Alpha and Omega, some of the Christian language.

He says as beginning and end, Alpha and Omega, he says, I'm the good shepherd.

I'm the only one who knows you tomorrow, because you don't.

But trust me, and because I am eternal, I'll take you home.

I'll lead you into the way to lead and walk your tomorrow.

And so that's these four that we long for are found in this text as we, I guess a summary of so many other parts of the New Testament.

And he's the higher power.

He's the higher power.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, they are the higher power that we long for.

There's a story that I heard 30 years ago, and it's always stuck with me, and I've mentioned it a few times here, over the years.

There's this garden, this beautiful garden, and two people walk into the garden, and they have very different impressions of the garden.

One says, there's, how's this garden?

It's beautiful.

There's a gardener for sure, like the intricate detail.

Someone not only designed this, put it all together, nurtured it, but sustains it all the time.

I'm sure there's a gardener.

And the other person says, I don't think there's a gardener at all.

It just looks like blind chance to me.

It's like you can see how it's just working together.

Mother Nature has done a great job.

And so the unbeliever comes up with a plan to prove that the believer is wrong.

The unbeliever says, okay, and the story is a little bit old, so it feels a little bit slightly outdated with its technology.

But the unbeliever says, let's put video surveillance around the garden, so if the gardener can be seen, we will see him or her.

And so we'll put sound recording devices around the garden, so if the gardener can be heard, we will hear him or her.

And we'll put sensors, so if the gardener can be touched, we'll know that the gardener is there.

And so they do this.

They put the video and the sound recording and the sensors, and they wait, and a day goes by, and then a couple of days and a week, and it goes for a month.

And guess what they found?

Nothing.

There was no video, there was no audio, and there was no sensors set off by the gardener.

And so in a smug way, the unbeliever came back and said, well, I told you, there's no gardener.

And the believer said, yes, there is.

There is a gardener.

And the unbeliever, quite rightly, this is the atheistic parable.

This is what the parable of the atheist, this is what the atheist says about Christian belief.

They say, okay, the unbeliever said, can you tell me what the difference is between a gardener you can't see, here, or touch, and no gardener at all?

What is the difference?

Well, the difference is the gardener turned up, isn't it?

That's the atheistic parable might end like that, but that's not the way this story of humanity ends.

The gardener is Jesus.

God became a human being.

He did turn up.

One John says it.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched.

Come on, the story is a good one, don't you reckon?

It links perfectly.

Was there a gardener at the start in the Garden of Eden?

Yes.

Who was Jesus when he turned up to those first witnesses walking after the resurrection?

Who did they think he was?

The gardener.

We end up in a new creation.

He is the perfect divine gardener and people saw him.

He turned up in history.

He was touched.

By lepers, he was touched.

He was seen.

This we proclaim concerning the word of life.

The life appeared.

We have seen it and testify to it.

We proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

CS.

Lewis famously said, Jesus, if he knew that what he claimed about himself, he claimed that he was God, he claimed that he was the only way to heaven, to eternal life, if he knew that what he was teaching people, which ultimately led them to their death, many of them, if he knew that he was teaching the wrong, like a lie, that's an awful thing, isn't it?

Like he's either a liar or a lunatic, if he's teaching a falsehood.

But, I mean, you might be running out of puff tonight, as many of us do, and you can't apply yourself to this thought, but smart people who have led religions, like Islam turned up 600 years after Christ, they look back, if you talk to a proper Muslim, they will say, Jesus is a prophet of God.

They don't think he's a lunatic or a liar.

In fact, Buddhists, even though they came before, lots of, I've spoken to Buddhists who go, Jesus was a great teacher.

People don't, across the board, in human history, they don't look at Jesus and say, he's a lunatic, he's a liar.

But CS.

Lewis so wisely said, if he's not a liar and a lunatic, and he claims he's the only way to the Father, he's the only way to eternal life, he is life, then he's the Lord of all.

And that means he's my Lord.

Humans do have this God-shaped hole in our life.

We have a longing to find home.

And we started out this whole series with an idea of the question, is God playing a cosmic game of hide and seek?

And we realized over the last five weeks, no, he's not.

He's constantly communicating, here I am, here I am, here I am.

You are dependent on me, you're small, and I'm eternal.

His eternal power has been shown from the beginning, and we are accountable to his divine nature.

We are dependent on him, and we are accountable.

He's shown us this most clearly in Jesus.

We are made in the image of God.

We have infinite worth, we really do.

And we belong through Jesus in a body that is the body life of the church.

It's a wonderful thing.

Totality is fulfilled in Christ.

The norm is God's word, and it's found in Jesus.

We are delivered from our sin by faith in Christ's death.

Our destiny is assured, we can trust the good shepherd.

And we have a higher power in God himself, who will take us into eternal life.

Do you know, maybe you're a Christian, I have had a couple of times in my life where I have just stopped, because I don't actually live with it all the time, for some reason I don't.

But when I have just realized, because I'm a Christian, I'm gonna live forever.

And it's crazy.

It's just like a deep breath and you're like, oh, oh, no one can touch me.

Nothing can touch me.

I'm gonna live forever.

Well, I'm gonna live forever.

Anyone see that Francis Chan illustration that he did once where he got a massive rope, huge rope out the front, and he put a little bit of tape on the rope.

He said, that's your life now on earth.

And that's eternity.

And when you realize by faith in Christ, based on a Christian worldview taught in the Bible, I haven't earned it through being good, but Christ earned it by being perfect in my place.

He died and he asked me and he asked you to put our faith in him.

And he promises to give us eternal life.

As Ben says, that's good news.

That's good news.

When we come home to God, you experience, and again, I've been talking to new Christians, and they just say these words.

You experience peace.

They sound really Christiany.

You experience peace, and you experience a sense of love, and you experience joy, and you experience hope, and it's all because of faith.

Sometimes that's called the famous five.

Peace, love, joy, hope, and faith.

It's worth it.

It's worth it following Jesus.

Oh, Lord God, what an amazing thought it is to think about the brilliance of the DNA you designed, of the complexity, of the wonder of humanity.

As the psalmist says, who are we that we would be made a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and given the job of managing the universe under the living God, the stewardship of all creation, and that, Lord Jesus, you are that human.

And that with you, we are invited to reign forever and be co-managers of creation.

It's too much for us.

We can't comprehend what you have in store for those who put our faith in you.

But we offer up our wonder tonight.

And we acknowledge that your goodness and your greatness and your grace is enough to cover our sin.

And your guidance is sure, and we can trust you for tomorrow.

So I, Lord, I pray that tonight, if there's anyone here who you want to testify that you are their Lord and Saviour, and they're going to go through the waters of baptism, just prompt them, I pray, in the name of Jesus, amen.

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