Reason for the Season

#1194

Some of the most sorrowful words in the new testament, Paul the Apostle, speaking of a young man Demas, on a missionary journey with him. “For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” (2 Timothy 10)

The old testament is soiled with one failure after another. Even Moses, Elijah, and David. God is a God of new beginnings and thankfully, we have a record of Saints “of whom the world was not worthy.” (Hebrews 11:38) Just think how happy the prophets of old would have been to have had some of our technology, even just a few of our comforts. We must put flesh and blood on historical people, just as we must know that God is looking at us using Jesus Christ as spectacles, solely depending on His faithfulness.

My doctor friend was bright, good-looking, more charismatic that any other man I have ever known. He liked fast cars, fast women, a fast lifestyle. He was making money fast in his practice and investments. When I had talked with him about his soul, he said I was hallucinating like Mother Teresa and many other people who believed in fairy tales but, the last time he was in my house, he looked straight at me and said, “Tom, don't change, you are the only hope I have, I may come around to your way of thinking.” When I learned that he had been killed at a NASCAR race, by flying debris of a wrecked race car, I wanted to believe that sometime, someway, his soul had been reached. He was so proud of his atheism, so despised theism. He had a mechanical view of the world, believed that science, DNA, electronics could explain everything, including creation. He felt that everything was a creation of the human mind. Was he way better off, or worse off, than the pretenders who have a habit of going to church... speaking the language, even singing the hymns.

Without the unconditional promises of God, what do you have when you pray? Everything is based on faith. Those who lived before the cross, their salvation based on faith and the promise of the coming of Christ. Those after the cross, their faith based on the promises from the atonement of the promised One on the cross.

We had talked at length about natural law that natural things are imposed by common sense, that mankind is endowed with a conscience which leads to civilized behavior regardless of religion. I told him that false religions might give comfort to some people but Jesus Christ was the only man in the world whose birth was prophesied hundreds of years before his birth. He was aware of the crucifixion-resurrection history.

From the foundation of the world, history tells us there has always been cycles... droughts so great that whole civilizations would move. Once, when I was in Kenya, my guide told me how tribes were moving across the country trying to find grasslands for their livestock. Many have move on manicured golf courses. From cycles, now we have extremes. I cannot find in history where there have been greater extremes, droughts. floods, snowfall, great winds. In Canada, Argentina, Brazil, crop land abandoned because of growing seasons. We know that news reporting is more intense than ever but we have never heard of so many disasters, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, etc. With an earth population of over seven billion, unpredictable climate changes and nuclear accidents, there is a greater need than ever before for “trust” in the Sovereign God of light and glory.

We have the answer book but, from the very beginning, man refused to follow it. We were told to observe the seven year Sabbath, leaving the land fallow one year of each seven... giving the land a rest, just as one day each week of seven days gives man a rest. God instructed that His people would prosper enough during the six years, just as His people were told about feasts, sacrifices, offerings, they refused to obey, they suffered the consequences such as the 70 years of Babylonian captivity.

If atheists had nothing to repudiate, scoff, why would such atheists as Richard Dawkins, Chiristopher Hitchens, or even your unbelieving, non-caring neighbors on your street care about your Christianity... what you worship. In spite of their protestations , these atheists, agnostics, pretenders, worship something. Usually it is their superiority from ancestry or money, their bloodline, their talent, their things.

I have traveled the world, every continent, it is in the nature of human beings to worship something. Some well chiseled-carved idol, a snarling snake, or, as in India, a cow or monkey.

When you get my age you realize the shortness of life, death just one breath away regardless of age. It is not degrees behind your name, money, family name, power, or prestige. Your happiness at this season or any season, will come from the “contentment” (Philippians 4:12) of knowing the One who is the reason for the season.