Quick thought from yesterday’s sermon. If you time-travel back a few years, it’s crazy that:
- A machine big enough to carry people could fly.
- Flipping a switch could light up a room.
- You talk into something, and people thousands of miles away hear your voice.
- Carriages travel at 60 mph — everyone knows horses can’t pull a carriage that fast!
- Men could walk on the moon.
- I move around a piece of equipment called a mouse (???), push a button, and another machine (to which it isn’t even attached by a wire) does something.
- Because I pushed a button in Scotland, people on perhaps every continent will read these words.
It’s not crazy if it’s true. Just because a thing is outside your own experience does not make it impossible or crazy. Why be so narrow-minded as to rule out as impossible anything which is outside your experience and understanding?
Act 26:8, 24-25
8 Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?
…
24 And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.
25 But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.
If there is a God, a real God, it would be incredible if He didn’t raise the dead, if He made it so that this life is all there is.
Jesus rose from the dead. It’s not crazy if it’s true. Many people are like Festus — if they haven’t seen it or don’t understand how it could happen, then you must be mad. It’s a pity. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything, bringing hope, joy, and peace with God, and they are missing out.
Mind Renewers 
And yet, many of those skeptics will happily play a game like SimCity, or believe something like the Matrix is possible, but when it comes to a Creator, who made us, and this known universe, it’s not possible. Thanks for this post.
There’s no such thing as a perfect skeptic. Everyone believes something, even if it is their own senses, or the scientific method, or something.
Thank you for the good comment.
Unbelief is an act of the will. Nobody will be able to stand before God and say they did not have enough evidence. “They did not *like* to retain God in their knowledge…” (Romans 1:28).
Nobody needs to shine a torch on the evidence for the existence of the sun. It is there, and anyone who is not wilfully blind can see the undeniable evidence for themselves. So it is with God. Skeptics are sceptics because they have closed their eyes and minds to the truth. “…through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:6). “Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.” (Job 21:14).
Right. Everyone chooses what they will believe.
Excellent point.
Thank you, Eric.
“And can it be that I should gain, an interest in the Savior’s blood?” Crazy (on one level), but true!
OK, you win, Helen! 🙂 Something true can be “crazy”! It is amazing, isn’t it?
Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand… (Philippians 4:5, ESV)
Excellent post. Thank you, Brother Jon.
Thank you, Brother Al.
That’s an interesting verse. The KJV translates it “moderation,” which we tend to think of as “self-control,” but I don’t think that is what the translators were getting at The ESV translates it as “reasonableness,” which we might think of as rational behaviour — but I don’t think that is what the translators were trying to communicate.
Others translate it “gentleness” (NKJV), “gentle spirit” (NASB), “forbearance” (A.T. Robertson), or “sweet reasonableness” (Matthew Arnold). I think that gives us the general idea. It obviously encompasses the rational behaviour implied by the ESV and the self-control that we read out of the word “moderation” in today’s English, but it strikes at the heart that drives those behaviours, rather than simply the external behaviour, behaving in those ways because we’ve cultivated the sweet and gentle spirit that leads to them.