Written in the stars?

Back in 1999, Sir Elton John released a track with Lean Rimes, called ‘Written in the Stars’. The song spells out the deep poignancy of what it is to be human.

It is a song about love and death. It speaks about finding true love. But then, having found this wonderful, precious affection, we realise that soon it will all be over. Life is temporary. Death will inevitably come and the person or people you most treasured will be snatched away. Life seems so cruel and spiteful. It can leave you wishing you had never loved in the first place.

Only for a day

Elton John’s song asks: ‘Is it written in the stars? / Are we paying for some crime? / Is this all that we are good for / just a stretch of mortal time? / Is this God’s experiment / in which we have no say / in which we’re given paradise, but only for a day?’

As a teenager I can remember contemplating this kind of thing. I was out in the garden one quiet night before I became a Christian, just standing watching wispy white clouds being blown across the starry sky in the light of a brilliant full moon. It was so peaceful and beautiful. But then suddenly the terrible realisation hit me. If you are capable of enjoying the world, then your enjoyment can only be temporary. Consciousness dies.

If you are an atheist, I suppose you could curse how cruel evolution is for ever giving us the ability to enjoy the world — which we don’t really need for our DNA to survive. Or you could, like Elton John’s song, try to blame God for making such an unfair world, which seems set up to cheat us — ‘God’s experiment in which we have no say.’ It is this cosmic robbery — ‘given paradise, but only for a day’ — which tragedy lies at the heart of human experience.

A year of disasters

This whole problem came sharply into focus as we saw lives cut short by the terrorist bombs that exploded in London last July 7. This Christmas we look back on a year, too, of shocking natural disasters with hurricanes and earthquakes, which have brought death to so many. Many have stood by the graveside grieving over loved ones.

But into such a hopeless, suffering world comes the astonishing message of the gospel: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3.16). Let me try to unpack this most famous Bible verse under three headings.

God’s heart: love

We are told: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his Son.’

* This is a most remarkable statement. We realise that the world as it is today is not at all as God originally made it or intended it to be. It is now a fallen world. God made this world ‘very good’. There was no tragedy, no death. But the first human sin alienated humanity from God bringing death and many other horrendous consequences.

* It is an even more remarkable statement when we realise that in Scripture the word ‘world’ is not a neutral word. It is often used to signify the whole independent, arrogant, anti-god attitude of the majority of the human race. ‘For everything in the world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does — comes not from the Father but from the world’ (1 John 2.16).

Elton John’s song acknowledges something of the Bible’s explanation for the way the world is, when it asks in the light of human hopelessness, ‘Are we paying for some crime?’ Is it that sin of Adam that makes us only worth a stretch of mortal time? But the song asks the question in a way that gently implies some great injustice. ‘How can it possibly be right for the human race to be living under such circumstances because of something that was done by other people so long ago?’ But the truth is that rejection of God is not a thing of the past. It is true of us all everyday. It is seen in our individual godlessness and corresponding selfishness. It is seen in the whole movement to secularisation as societies develop. ‘O we might have looked to God when we were primitive and vulnerable, but now we have wealth and technology we have no place for you God.’ And that same anti-god spirit is shown from the fact that the Bible has been the most suppressed book and God’s people are and always have been persecuted by the world. With that kind of background we might expect our text to read not of God’s love but of God’s hate. The suicide bombers, by their drastic actions, seem to send out a message that Allah so hates the world of unbelieving infidels that he commissions suicide bombers to blow them to pieces.

But Allah is not the God of the Bible. Though the world, by its rebellion against God, has misused and messed up God’s creation, exposing itself to a coming day of judgement, nevertheless God’s heart is that he would not have to enter into judgement with us. God wants to rescue us. He loves us and sent his Son that we might not perish.

Each one matters to him in spite of our hostility to him. He loves us.

God’s gift: his Son

The astonishing extent of God’s love is seen by the gift that he has given to the world. We are told: ‘He gave his one and only Son.’

* Who did God give? All Christians are God’s children. But none are anywhere near in the same category as Jesus. He is God’s one and only, his eternal Son, his perfect Son, who himself is God, part of the Trinity. How much does God love us? He gave his only Son. The Puritan writer John Flavell tells of a German family back in the 17th century ready to perish in a famine. ‘The husband made a motion to the wife to sell one of the children for bread, to relieve themselves and the rest. The wife at last consents that it should be so. But then they began to think which of the four (children) should be sold; and, when the eldest was named, they both refused, being the firstborn and beginning of their strength. Then they considered the second. But they could not for he was the living image of his father. The third was named, but she was so like her mother. And they could not bring themselves to sell the youngest, the baby of the family. So they were content to perish altogether in the famine than to part with a child.’ They would not give one of their four children to save themselves. But God gave his one and only Son, not to save himself, but to save you and me.

* What was the purpose of giving his Son? The immediate context shows us. ‘Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. Jesus is referring here to the incident during Israel’s time in the desert. They so complained against God that he allowed poisonous snakes to invade the camp. People were dying. God told Moses to make an image of a snake and lift it up for all to see. If anyone was bitten and they looked to the serpent on the pole, a miracle took place. They were healed. Just so there is life for a dying world by looking to Jesus. How does that work? What do you remember about snakes, serpents in Scripture? It was through Satan, acting in a serpent, that mankind was first led away from God. The serpent is the great symbol of sin. But there on the cross, Jesus took our sins. He became the serpent, the very incarnation of sin, and there willingly bore the eternal death penalty we deserve. So by his death we are given life.

At Christmas we give great gifts to those we love. How much does God love us? He gave his only Son. He gave him to death on the cross.

God’s guarantee: eternal life

Human life is a tragedy. Life can be so good. The love of family and friends can still give us a taste of paradise. But death makes sure it’s ‘only for a day’. However, in Christ there is eternal life. The great robbery of death is thwarted. Yes, we will die. But, nevertheless, we shall live forever. That’s God’s guarantee.

* This offer is no con-trick. We know because Jesus himself rose from the dead. Three days after he died on the cross and was buried, his tomb was empty. To his flabbergasted disciples he showed himself alive. Alive forevermore he guarantees eternal life to us.

* This offer is for all. Notice there is a word which keeps repeating. It is the word ‘whoever’ (vv.16,18,36). This autumn the Royal Mail came under criticism for its 68p Christmas stamp, which depicted people from India worshipping the baby Jesus. Some Hindus were offended. But actually the Post Office had got it spot-on. Jesus is for all nations. ‘Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

We think of the many great joys of life even in this fallen world. Death, whether it be by terrorism or whatever, snatches it all away. It seems like something ‘Written in the stars’, fate which cannot be altered Ð a terrible destiny from which there is no escape.

But that is not true. Our destiny is not something ‘in which we have no say’. There is a choice to be made. There is good news for those living in the shadow of death, God so loves us that there is eternal life for us in Christ.

John Benton

© Evangelicals Now - December 2005
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