Back
to the Sea
I take you back now to again
talk about the early Polynesians, navigating their way through the immeasurable
waters of the Pacific and looking for an island to call their home. In several
ways it is a good illustration of how one finds his or her way to God. In my
rather lengthy explanation of the methods of these navigators last week, I had
more of a purpose that to just teach you about the Polynesians. It was also to
illustrate how a seeking soul finds his or her way to God.
Reason alone would not have allowed the Polynesians to discover and to
colonize the vastly scattered islands of the Pacific. Reason alone would have
calculated that the chances of finding such tiny islands in this great and
unknown ocean to be very slim. In fact, now that we know the size of the
Pacific in relation to the total land mass of all of the islands, we can calculate the chances. It is about one
in ten thousand.[1] These
are not very good odds, especially when your life and the life of your family are
on the line.
However, it is not that these first people blindly and foolishly set out
in their canoes in the outside chance that they would end up on an island. They
did not rely on chance, since they had learned to read the signs of what was
happening around them.
They used all of their senses as
well as their reason. They had learned from the past and had built upon the
teachings of their ancestors. They learned to feel the ocean currents and to
read the wave patterns. They studied the movements of the stars and the daily
flight patterns of the ocean birds. They may not have first known where the
island of their destination was, but they had learned how to steer the course
toward land even when out in a vast ocean hundreds of miles away from any
island.
That is what Paul told the people of Athens about the search for God. If we
would learn to read the signs of what was going on around us, God has given to
each nation and people a specific time and environment in which to live, and in
which all could “seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward Him
and find Him.”
Again in the words of Paul…
And he (God) made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the
face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of
their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might
feel their way toward him and find him. (Acts 17:26-27 ESV)
In our own present day society, we are not good at this. We are not good
at reading the signs of things that are going on around us. When economic times
become difficult, we often first look for someone to blame. When a natural disaster
strikes in some part of the world, we limit our talk to climate change and how
man may or may not be responsible. When a new standard of what is acceptable
enters our culture that before was considered iniquitous, we simply learn to
adapt to it and not to question. These types of responses show that we are not
proficient at navigating through the times in which we live.
Perhaps we need to get a little bit wet. By this I mean like the
apprentice Polynesian navigator, we also need to enter into an apprenticeship
where we can learn to be sensitive to the signs of the environment and the
times in which we are living. Perhaps we need to get out of our canoes and lie
on our back in the ocean so that we can feel the currents and learn to read the
wave patterns.
As it is presently, we are trying to do our navigation through life
experiences without perceiving what God is doing. God is moving all around us,
but we are novices in discerning the meanings of his movements. We are students
who have not yet learned to read the currents and the waves of the times in
which we live.
In the end, God is not that difficult to find. That is what Paul also
told the Athenians. He said to them, “Yet he (God) is actually not far from
each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some
of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring’” (Acts 17:27-28
ESV).
The man Job of ancient times said essentially the same thing:
But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you; and the birds of the
heavens, and let them tell you. Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you;
and let the fish of the sea declare to you. Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this, in whose hand is the life of every
living thing, and the breath of all mankind? (Job 12:7-10 NAS)
God is not far from any one of us. Signs of his presence are all around
us. The reason that many do not see these signs is because they have not
trained themselves to notice. Many are like land dwellers out in the ocean for
the first time, or like city dwellers walking in the forest for the first time
in their lives. They may enjoy the environment, but they have little
understanding of what is happening all around them.
Many people do not know of the presence of God because they have grown to
be insensitive to his actions. According to what Job said, the beasts, birds,
fish, and even the earth itself would have something to teach us about the
sovereignty of God. This is not a statement of pantheism or any such belief as
that, but simply that there are evidences of God all around us, and we often do
not see them.
Just as the Polynesians considered the boat in which they were riding as
being rather stationary, and the elements of the sea, the wind and the stars being
in motion around them, God is also in motion around each of us. It may not be necessarily
in some mysterious and naturalistic way, but only that he is intimately
involved with every aspect of our lives. In every way that God has at his
disposal, he is trying to guide you to him.
Paul, like an experienced navigator teaching an apprentice, also explains
to us how to start to learn to feel our way to God. Paul tells us that God
understands that we may have been unaware of what he was doing in the past, but
now we must begin to learn. The very first lesson is this:
The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people
everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the
world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given
assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30-31 ESV)
I will agree that what Paul told the Athenians was a simplified version
of how we come to Christ, or how Christ comes to us. Paul did not enter into
some of the deeper aspects of theology with the people on that day. However,
despite all that he could have said and did not, what Paul did tell the people
was completely adequate for them to find their way to God. Repentance and
turning to the evidence of the resurrected Christ will lead us to God.
Reason alone will not bring us to this realization. Philosophy alone will
not bring us there. We tend to elevate reason and philosophy in our opinion
because they represent some of the highest achievements of man. Nevertheless, believe
it or not, the use of reason and philosophy alone fall under the category of
“the times of ignorance” that Paul spoke about. Paul told the people of Athens
that it was time to move beyond that. It is also time for all of us to move
beyond that way of thinking.
By charting our path through life using reason and philosophy only, we
are assuming that we possess within ourselves the ability to find true meaning
in our living. That is a faulty assumption. Thousands of years of philosophical
reasonings have brought us no nearer to peace in society. If anything, we are
presently seeing more chaos in society than at any time in recent history.
Some may argue that neither has thousands of years of religion brought us
any nearer to peace. With this I would agree. Most religious movements,
unfortunately even including many so-called Christian movements, have been
nothing more than a thin veneer of external saintliness painted over man’s own
efforts.
If one is to find God, all such efforts generated by our own abilities
must cease. We cannot find God by using only our own powers of thought. Like
the Polynesians in search of a new island home in the midst of the great
Pacific, we also must learn to read the signs of what is happening around us in
order to guide us to the One whom we are seeking. Using our own powers exclusively
will only keep us sailing around in circles, ignorant of the meanings of the
times in which we are living.
Repentance
Paul tells us that the key element in moving beyond the times of
ignorance is repentance. This is the first step. As the apostle has written, although
God is willing to forget our fruitless efforts of the past, in order to finally
make some progress in our thinking, he next commands us to repent.
Why repentance?
Repentance is needed because by assuming that we can arrive at what is
true by using only and merely our own powers of thought and self-government, we
are demonstrating that we believe that we are the masters over all eternal
matters of our lives. This is a false assumption. According to what the ancient
man Job has said, we are the only ones of God’s living beings who are blind to
the fact that we have been created by the hand of God.
To repeat what Job said, “Who among all [the creatures of the earth] does
not know that the hand of the LORD has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all
mankind?”
Whether we see it or not, our very existence depends upon the sovereignty
of God. We do not realize this because we have become estranged from God. That
estrangement came about because we have rebelled against the sovereignty of God
and claimed our independence from him. In the Bible, living in this state of
rebellion commonly is called “sin.”
It is because of this that the first step in being able to see the hand
of God active in this present day must be repentance. Paul later told King
Agrippa the same thing. He told the king that the message of his ministry had
always been that the Jew and the Gentile alike “should repent and turn to God,
performing deeds in keeping with their repentance” (Acts 26:20 ESV).
“Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,
but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all
the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn
to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance (Acts 26:20 ESV).
Faith With Eyes
Wide Open
We must abandon our thoughts of our independence from God and accept that
he is Lord of all creation. We do this by first accepting the fact that we are
estranged from him because of sin. We are living in a state of rebellion
against the One who created us, and it is only by repentance from this life of
insurrection that we will find our way to God.
Coming to know God in this way is something that we accept and believe by
means of faith. It is not blind faith, however. A blind faith would have us
ignore the signs around us or to be entirely unaware of them, and still accept
what we are told.
This is not the type of faith that will lead us to God. Rather than a
blind faith, the faith that leads us to God comes about specifically because we have begun to become aware of
things we did not before notice. Like an apprentice navigator in the vast ocean
of this world, we have our eyes wide open and have begun to see some of what
God is doing to lead us to himself. We have set out on our own voyage and he
who was once unknown to us will become known.
A Sign on the
Horizon
Another of the signs of land that the ancient Polynesian explorers used
to tell them of presence of land were the cloud formations of the sky over the
horizons of the ocean. By observing the cloud formations in the distant skies, the
sailors in their double-hulled canoes could often determine the presence of an
island even far beyond the horizon. Even the type of cloud and the height the
cloud attained told much about the nature of the land underneath them. In fact,
the original Maori name for New Zealand, Aotearoa,
actually does mean, “land of the long white cloud.”
Fixing their course for the towering cloud in the sky, the Polynesians
sailed toward their goal. They had set their hope on a new land where they
could settle and call their new home.
Once we have responded in repentance and have learned to fix our path
toward navigating our way to God, the apostle John tells us this:
Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what
we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we
shall see Him just as He is. And everyone
who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. (I
John 3:2-3 NAS)
A Hopeful Sign
in the Sky
John speaks of having our hope fixed on Jesus.
I have written and spoken much in the past on how the word hope, as commonly used in these days, is
much different than the Biblical definition for the word. When we use the word
today, we usually mean it mostly in terms of a wish.
In the midst of a cold spell in Northern Wisconsin, we may say something to the effect of “I hope that we will get some thawing temperatures today,” when in reality, we know that we will not. What we are actually saying is “I wish that we would get some warm weather!”
In the midst of a cold spell in Northern Wisconsin, we may say something to the effect of “I hope that we will get some thawing temperatures today,” when in reality, we know that we will not. What we are actually saying is “I wish that we would get some warm weather!”
That is not the Biblical definition. When the Bible speaks of hope, it
means it more in terms of a goal. Our hope is something for which we are
striving.
As the Polynesian explorers read the signs of how to find land in the
vast and trackless Pacific Ocean, one morning they saw the sign of the cloud on
the horizon. After weeks and sometimes months at sea, as they followed the sign
of the cloud, the day finally arrived when, on the far horizon and under that
tall cloud, they saw land! They saw their new island! They had reached their
goal—their hope!
Our Sign of Hope
The Apostle Peter wrote much of the concept of hope in his short letters,
especially in the first one. He speaks of our hope as a living hope—something
that does not fade or die even in the face of difficult circumstances.
In the words of Peter, for those who have set their course guided by God,
God has…
Given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled,
and unfading, reserved in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by
God’s power for the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time…
Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and though you do not see Him
now, you believe in Him and rejoice with an inexpressible and glorious joy, now
that you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1
Peter 1:3-5, 8-9 BSB).
Peter urges us to “prepare our minds for action.” He tells us to be “sober-minded…
setting our hope fully on the grace to be given us at the revelation of Jesus
Christ (1Peter1:13).
This at last is our hope. This is our goal for which we strive. Our hope
is the grace that we will finally understand in fullness when we see Jesus.
Hope Beyond
Today
Where is it that you are placing your hope? In our heavy election season,
is your hope that all will be better if Trump is elected? Maybe you think all
will be better if Biden is elected? Or perhaps your situation is a recent
medical crisis, or a financial one. Maybe you are placing your hope in the
promised vaccine. Perhaps you are thinking once the vaccine arrives, life can
return to normal.
Really? Normal? Is that all that
you are hoping for? God is trying to guide you beyond a life that is merely normal. He wants to give to you the extraordinary.
I would encourage you to think beyond your present circumstances,
whatever they may be. Jesus has told us that he has gone away to prepare for us
an entirely new home (John 14). We need to lift our eyes to the horizon to look
for the presence of God beyond our present circumstances or the present
political situation. God is there. He is giving you signs to lead you to him if
you would only take the time to recognize them. He is calling you to a new home
that he has prepared for you.
I encourage you to repent of your
thoughts of being able to navigate through the wilderness of this life using
only your own limited instincts. Learn to read the signs of what God is doing
in your life and follow the path that he has laid out for you.
You must learn to navigate through these seas of the present. You must
learn to navigate your way to God.
[1] Excluding
the relatively larger land masses of New Guinea and New Zealand on the edges of
the Pacific
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