Without excuse
They smell. They're noisy. They burp a lot. They annoy commercial fishermen by trying to and sometimes succeeding in stealing part of their catches. On land, they're slow and fat (like yours truly!). In the water, they're amazingly graceful and they're playful. I love to watch them. They fascinate me, in part because of how graceful and swift they are in the water. They are California Sea Lions.
Sometimes they're on the docks here in Charleston and my friends complain about the noise they make. When they're on the docks, my friends can hear them from about a mile away, that's how loud they can be. To me, they're amazing creatures. To them, they're a nuisance. I guess it depends on your point of view.
When I was a kid, they were my favorite animals to see at the zoo. I liked the penguins, too but the sea lions mesmerized me when they were swimming. I could have watched them for hours. I still could. I got to see them up close the other day when I had lunch with a friend. And them. We ate outside. I got closer to a sea lion than I had ever been that day. I know not to touch them. I didn't do that. I did get close enough to find out that they, in fact, stink.
This place is about three hours south of where I live. The drive from here to there is amazing and the full beauty of God's creation is on display. Utah has it's own beauty and the diversity of terrain also points to God's creation.
God's creation is pretty amazing. It all works. We're all blessed with different abilities and even different degrees of skill within the abilities we have. It all meshes together beautifully when it works properly. Someone with carpentry skills gets blessed to build houses that other people with different skills buy. Different craftsmen work on a house, each using his particular skills to make the house what it is from a pile of raw materials that by itself, looks nothing like the finished product. Good workmen build good houses. And it allows them to provide for their families.
When each person is doing what they're good at and good at what they do, creation works pretty well. The builders hire the tradesmen to build the house they sell to someone else who make their living another way. And the beat goes on.... We see God in His creation at work every day, whether or not we notice or acknowledge it, and like my friends the sea lions, we tend to thrive when we're in the right elements but that doesn't always happen.. What gums up the gears is this sin business, and that's where the painful words without excuse come in.
The book of Revelation talks about a coming judgment for those that are unbelievers. If you are unsaved and anything like I used to be, you might think that God exists but that God is what your idea of God is. Some people are angry at God because He doesn't fit the idea they have of what God should be. God has revealed to us things He chose through creation and through His Word. In the New Testament, we see an amazing story unfold for the redemption of the whole human race in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This same Jesus, whose birth is celebrated on December 25, the "reason for the season" as some put it, is plain and simple the real Reason creation exists. And what you do with Jesus as a personal matter, well it matters. And not just here. It matters for eternity.
I never understood that because I always thought I knew what the Bible said, without actually reading it. What I knew was some Bible stories, and mixed with my own ideas of being a "good person" I came to the conclusion that getting into heaven consisted of having one's life judged and if the good outweighed the bad, you got into heaven. Hell, well that place was for the really bad people.
The problem with this kind of thinking is that it's not Biblical. It's a lie. And I believed that lie for a very, very long time. And then finally came face to face with the reality that I needed Jesus to save me from, chiefly at that moment, me and the mess I'd made of my life without him. Thankfully He found me. I was the lost one. He was already there.
But sometimes, like today, I wonder what would have been my fate if I hadn't. I think of my turn at the Great White Throne of Judgment and the fate that would have awaited me. I would have said some things, like I believed, but I really didn't live like it. I would have said a lot of things. Like I didn't know. But because creation testifies to God's existence and because my grandmother gave me a Bible I didn't read, I would have been like so many: without excuse.
The thing Christians get knocked most for is being hypocrites. We preach one thing, do another, and when that goes badly or gets found out, it does all kinds of damage. We forget that people still have that sin nature and sometimes that battle gets lost. Believers sin. The Bible points out to the saved that when they sin, not if, what we're to do. The problem is that when we do, the collateral damage that can be done is sometimes severe.
But still, we try to share the good news that what happens after the Great White Throne of Judgment doesn't have to happen to YOU. And maybe, if you're among my unsaved friends, those words will give you pause to maybe re-think what you think you know about God, about Jesus, and make you want to at least read more about what I'm talking about.
I read the Bible for the first time at age 45. It literally made me realize how wrong I had been about Jesus, about God, about Heaven and hell. It made me understand that both of those places are real and hell wasn't gonna be a bar room and me having drinks for eternity with my friends. Far from it. And then nobody ever really talked about that whole Lake of Fire thing.
The amazing thing is that because I just chose to take God at His word, to believe Jesus is who He says He is, all these amazing promises became reality to me. I didn't do a thing to earn it. I couldn't if I tried. I didn't deserve God's grace and His forgiveness, and yet, I found it waiting for me through His son. The things I gave up never were things that did anything in the long run but hurt me or leave me unsatisfied. I found a better way to live that, while contrarian to the ways of the world today, will lead me to an eternity with God and a place so far better than anything I could imagine. Because I was willing to accept that Jesus died for my sins.
So I hope today that you'll really think about that whole thing, "Without Excuse". Because at the end of days, if you're not a believer, the thing you'll need the most is the thing you don't, and never will, have.
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