“He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need” (Acts 17:24-25)
Sometimes, we want to become God so bad. The reason we want to become God is because we are imperfect. We lack assurance. We lack control. We lack peace. We have needs. We want to run the world our way.
The problem is, we aren't God. We are sinners. We hurt ourselves, we hurt each other and we hurt God by doing things we know are not worship to God but rather defiance and rebellion from God. We're stuck on our own and we need help.
This need of ours reminds me of a story about a guy named Larry …
What goes up, must come down
Larry always wanted to fly ever since he could remember. I imagine he would look up at the sky, see planes flying overhead and wish he was the pilot. I imagine he read about flying, talked about flying and pretended to fly.
Well, when he grew up and attempted to become an airforce pilot, he was denied due to his bad eyesight. I’m sure this was a massive, massive dissapointment for him.
Years later, after becoming a truck driver, Larry decided to act on an impulse he had been having for years. He went to an army surplus store, bought 45 weather balloons and several helium tanks.
When he got home, he filled up the weather balloons, attached them to a lawn chair, and tied the lawn chair to the bumper of his car. So his lawn chair was just floating above his car in the drive way. Can you imagine being his neighbor? “Honey … Larry is floating a lawn chair. Should we be worried?”
He went inside to grab some standard lawn chair flight items. He made himself some sandwhiches, grabbed some drinks, made sure he had his swiss army knife and a pellet gun. His plan was to cut the rope that was holding down his lawn chair, float about 30 feet in the air, have some food, then shoot the balloons one at a time when he was ready to descend.
Well he didn’t get 30 feet up in the air. He shot like a rocket 16,000 feet in the air – in a lawn chair (let that sink in). He didn’t sip on his drinks, he didn’t eat his sandwiches, he didn’t shoot his balloons. He didn’t want to rock the boat at all. So he stayed motionless, freezing and scared to death for 14 hours. In a lawn chair.
Eventually he floated over the airport and a Pan Am pilot spotted him while flying by. Can you imagine seeing that? Can you imagine calling that in? “Air Traffic Control, we got a guy up here in a lawn chair…with a gun.”
They sent a rescue helecopter, got him down and then arrested him for invading the LAX airspace. Wow.
We can't even save ourselves
Anyway, here’s where I’m going with this. At the height of Larry's ascent, when he was 16,000 feet from the ground, did Larry have any hope of saving himself? Was there any way that he could overcome his problem? Could he have met his needs at all? Never. To try would have meant instant death.
So it is with us and our sin problem. We can’t become God. We can’t overcome. We can’t win. We are way, way too far gone.
But, thankfully, someone has spotted us, someone has called in for help and someone has sent a rescuer.
Paul says here that God meets our every need. He meets this need through Jesus (are you seeing a pattern here?).
The book of Philippians tells us:
Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
We cannot meet our needs by becoming God, so God meets our needs by becoming man. As a man he becomes our servant. He lives a fully human life, though he could have had all the luxuries of God. He shows us the meaning of life. He sets a pattern for how we ought to live and then he dies on a cross in our place, for our sins. He then rises again for God’s glory, defeating our sin, showing us that not only can he meet our need of forgiveness by dying for our sins, he has the power to give us a new life in him, apart from sin.
This relieves us from having to become God ourselves. We can stay human and still find what we our looking for: peace, forgiveness, wholeness and purpose, through Jesus.