A GOD WHO CAN'T BE BEAT #4

WAS CALVARY A RIGGED GAME?

"Say it isn't so, Joe."

Those five poignant words from a little boy describe the disbelief and despair sports fans felt when they learned that eight players on the Chicago White Sox baseball team had conspired to throw a World Series game, losing 5-3 to Cincinnati. It was the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919. "Joe," of course, was Joseph Jefferson "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, THE big star on the tainted Chicago team. Children, innocent-eyed boys, just couldn't believe that "Shoeless" Joe Jackson could have sold out the game that way. "Say it isn't so, Joe."

You know, even when it's just a ballgame, decent people are angry when someone looks for a FIXED contest. An owner or a wealthy gambler wants to be sure his side comes out on top, so he pays off athletes on the other side to miss a pass or fumble a play or drop a fly ball in the ninth inning. "Point shaving," it's called, when someone wants a sure thing and tampers with the rules in order to rig the outcome.

Well, there are a million ugly little stories we could tell on this topic, but I have a deeper, more sobering question to ask you. All this week we've been talking about A GOD WHO CAN'T BE BEAT. And friend, it's good news that God IS going to win! In fact, because of Calvary, He already HAS won! The cross of Jesus Christ spells defeat for the enemy and victory for the forces of heaven. When Jesus came out of the tomb on that resurrection Sunday, Satan knew that he had lost. He knew that the war was basically over . . . and all he could do from that point on, for the next 2000 or so years, would be to break the heart of God by continuing to damage and destroy God's children, God's trophies.

But that brings up a very deep and thought-provoking question. Has God ever risked ANYTHING? Was His kingdom EVER in jeopardy? Was it even possible that Jesus might fail in His mission to Planet Earth?
We've read with renewed hope the Bible's clear statements that, since the Calvary mission WAS successful, God won't lose in the end. But COULD Calvary have failed?

There are clearly some areas where God DID take risks . . . and where He actually LOST in some of them. You and I are living proof of one of those risks.
You see, when God made Lucifer, He created him as a free moral agent. An intelligent, smarter-than-human being with the ability to choose loyalty or disloyalty, good or evil, joyful obedience or rebellion. Sin wasn't programmed into Lucifer or into any of the millions of holy angels created . . . but that freedom, that capacity to choose one's own destiny, was part of the angel package.

You can read in Isaiah chapter 14 and then again in places like Revelation how Lucifer took that divine gift of free choice . . . and went down the wrong road. And how God, who had taken that risk, ended up losing. Not only did He lose Lucifer, His chosen angel whom He loved . . . but a third of ALL the angels, as described in prophetic language in Revelation chapter 12 verse 4.
Of course, you can go back to the very FRONT of your Bible and find God repeating that same risk. In Genesis chapter three, it's clear that He's created Adam and Eve with that same wonderful but danagerous capacity: freedom to choose between right and wrong. And that very gift extends down to us here in the 1990s: you can serve God or you can serve God's enemy. Every being on this planet has that GOD-GIVEN right.

What a tremendous risk God took, filling His universe with creatures who had both the capacity to love and the ability to depart FROM love! And friend, God never WILLED that Lucifer or any of us should take that wrong road. But in His desire to have a universe where love and worship were FREELY offered, He risked so much in making us free moral agents. And what a price He's paid as a result.

Now we come down to two great questions that people love to debate even today. And I'm going to be very frank and open with you; earnest Christians study and discuss these two points, and we don't all see eye to eye. I certainly don't know everything in the world. And, of course, a 15-minute radio program is no place to SOLVE these issues. But just to give you something to study and think about and pray about, let me lay them before you.

Question Number One: Was it possible for Jesus Christ to sin? He came down to this earth as our Redeemer . . . but could He have been overcome Himself? Could the sinless Lamb of God have become stained by sin, which, of course, would have jeopardized Calvary?

In other words, was there a risk to heaven in this boldest of projects? Could Jesus have failed?

Again, let me honestly state that there are good Christians who believe and teach that Jesus Christ, "that holy thing," as the Bible describes Him in Luke chapter one, COULD NOT SIN. That He was incapable of sinning.

Now friend, I DO NOT HOLD that view. I respect it, but I do disagree. As I look in the early pages of Matthew AND Mark AND Luke, where the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness, it seems clear to us here at The Voice of Prophecy that these were REAL temptations. Although Jesus COULD HAVE sinned, He DID NOT. He won all three battles, and these WERE real battles.

One Bible commentator, Philip Schaft, in his book The Person of Christ, has observed, wisely, I think, that if Jesus were simply INCAPABLE of sinning, then the temptations in the wilderness were, as he put it, "an unreal show." Almost a fake, a fraud.

My NIV Bible text notes for this passage say this:

"Jesus' temptation was REAL, not merely symbolic. He was `tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin.'" That's from Hebrews 4:15. Then it goes on: He [Jesus] was confronted by the tempter with a REAL opportunity to sin."

And of course, if we pull back the curtain and glimpse behind the scenes of a certain fateful Thursday night, we find our Savior being tempted again — viciously, relentlessly — by the enemy of heaven. I love how Dr. Roy Adams describes the scene in his book, The Nature of Christ. Listen:

"The struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane represented the final, titanic showdown of Christ's earthly ministry. Recognizing that the game was almost over, the devil pulled out all the stops. That night, the entire attention of the hosts of hell was focused on one place and one place only — the Garden of Gethsemane. Athens was free of devils that night, I think. And so also were Rome and Corinth and Ephesus and all the cities, towns, and hamlets of the world."

And then he quotes another writer, in saying:
"The serpent himself made Christ the mark of every weapon of hell."
Now, friend, those are the views of PEOPLE. But as I read from the pages of the Bible itself how Jesus prayed that night, in AGONY, in ANGUISH, prostrating Himself on the ground . . . I get a very real sense of how JESUS knew what was at stake. JESUS knew that something very real was being risked. This was not a FIXED World Series game.

And the next afternoon, when people standing at the foot of the cross hurled insults at Him and flung their obscene taunts in His face — "Hey! Jesus of Nazareth, Come on down!" — that was a REAL temptation. That one thief hanging there next to Him said the same thing: "Hey, man! Save Yourself . . . and us too!" Jesus was tempted to do exactly that. Those temptations were real.

Question Number Two: Was heaven itself at risk? One of the founders and great authors of my own Adventist denomination wrote this in the book, Christ's Object Lessons:

"Go to Gethsemane, and there watch with Jesus through those long hours of anguish when He sweat as it were great drops of blood; look upon the Saviour uplifted on the cross; hear that despairing cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Look upon that wounded head, the pierced side, the marred feet. REMEMBER THAT CHRIST RISKED ALL; "tempted like as we are," HE STAKED EVEN HIS OWN ETERNAL EXISTENCE upon the issue of the conflict. HEAVEN ITSELF was imperiled for our redemption."

What would have happened to heaven and God's government if Jesus had failed? I want to say that this is the greatest MOOT question in the universe! Praise God, I'm so glad it's a moot question!

Would God still be God if Jesus had failed in His mission? Yes. God would have still been Ruler in the universe . . . except on this planet, of course. But salvation and redemption would never have happened. Forgiveness and eternal life could never have been granted. Holy beings throughout the realm of heaven would still have worshiped . . . but motivated by fear instead of love. Lucifer's accusations would still be echoing off the distant corners of the universe.

You know, when Adolf Hitler ruled in Germany, he WAS in power. He ran a tight ship. You know what they say: "Under Hitler, the trains ran on time." But it was a power structure glued together by fear and force and some black-booted Gestapo storm troopers.

In the Desert Storm war back in January of '91, the United States and its partners had the capacity all along to WIN. We had the firepower and the weapons and all the numbers on our side. But it wasn't enough to win; you had to win RIGHT. You had to win in a way that showed you had truth on your side, that you were fighting in a just war, for a good cause. And that you deserve the kind of power that comes from a righteous victory.

Friend, because of Calvary, that's the kind of power God holds today. He's not only God, but a righteous God. Because He risked so much THEN . . . in that garden . . . and on that hill, TODAY the danger is finally past. The risk has been removed. We serve a God who CAN'T BE BEAT.