Chase the Lion: Defying Odds
November 7, 2006
Mark Batterson
This evotional begins a new series titled: Chase the Lion. Check out the series trailer @ chasethelion.com. Or watch the webcast @ theaterchurch.com.
Over the next seven weeks, this series will explore seven lion chasing skills: defying odd, facing fears, overcoming adversity, embracing uncertainty, taking risks, seizing opportunities, and looking foolish.
How big is God?
Last week I took Josiah, my four year-old, out to Cox Farm in Northern Virginia and they have a huge King Kong hanging on a tower right by the entrance. And when Josiah saw it he said, “There’s Kingdom Come.”
I have no idea why, but Josiah thinks that King Kong is Kingdom Come. So we actually asked Josiah if he knew the Lord’s Prayer and he recited part of it: Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come thy will be done.
And I’m thinking to myself: what is going through his head? Does he think he’s praying for King Kong to come? And why in the world would you pray that?
If I know anything as a parent I know this: a four year-old mind is on the great unsolved mysteries of life. You never know what they’re thinking or what they’re going to say.
Josiah is going through a fascinating phase in his neurological development right now. He keeps asking us how big God is.
We were driving up the George Washington Parkway this week and Josiah said, “Dad, God is bigger than the cars right?” I said, “Yup.” He said, “Dad, God is bigger than the trees right?” I said, “Yup.” But my all-time favorite is the question he asked Lora: “Mom, God is bigger than Target right?” Of course, Lora said, “Josiah, do you mean Target or SuperTarget?”
I find this absolutely fascinating. Josiah is literally trying to figure out how big God is. My four year-old is on a quantum quest to measure the transcendence of God. Must be a pastor’s kid!
Now here’s the thing. That question—how big is God—may be the most important question you ever ask! Your answer to that question will determine your spiritual future.
I think A.W. Tozer said it best: “A low view of God is the cause of a hundred lesser evils.” But a person with a “high view” of God “is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems.”
A small god is the cause of a hundred lesser evils. A big God is the solution to ten thousand temporal problems!
It is also the difference between scaredy-cats and lion chasers! If your god is smaller than a 500 pound lion you’ll run away! But if you’re God is bigger than a 500 pound lion you might just muster the moral courage to chase lions!
Impossible Odds
Over the next seven weeks we’ll look at II Samuel 23:20-23 from seven different angles. This week I want to look at it through the eyes of an odds maker.
There was also Benaiah son of Jehoiada, a valiant warrior from Kabzeel. He did many heroic deeds, which included killing two of Moab’s mightiest warriors. Another time he chased a lion down into a pit. Then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it. Another time, armed only with a club, he killed a great Egyptian warrior who was armed with a spear. Benaiah wrenched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with it. These are some of the deeds that made Benaiah almost as famous as the Three. He was more honored than the other members of the Thirty, though he was not one of the Three. And David made him commander of his bodyguard.
II Samuel 23:20-23
Let me state the obvious: Benaiah was not the odds on favorite in any of these encounters. He was doubled-teamed by two mighty Moabites. He had to be a two-to-one underdog. If I’m placing bets on an average size Israelite with a club or a giant Egyptian with a spear I’m going to put my money on the sharp pointy thing! And I don’t even know how you begin to calculate the odds of man vs. lion.
Not only do fully grown lions weigh up to 500 pounds and run 35 mph, their vision is five times better than a human with 20/20 vision. This lion had a huge advantage in a dimly lit pit. And I guarantee that a sure-footed lion with cat-like reflexes certainly gains the upper paw in snowy, slippery conditions.
Now zoom out.
Doesn’t it seem like Benaiah is choosing his battles poorly! He’s outmanned and out-sized! And this guy goes on to become Commander-in-Chief of Israel’s army. And if you’re Commander-in-Chief you better know how to choose your battles wisely!
On one level this seems like a mistake, but what if Benaiah and a buddy had defeated a single Moabite? Or what if Benaiah had defeated a small Egyptian? Or chased his cat into a pit on a sunny day and found it. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be reading about it. Why? Big deal. The odds were in his favor.
Most of us don’t like being in pits with lions on snowy days, but those are the stories worth telling. Those are the experiences that make life worth living!
So lion chasers don’t try to avoid situations where the odds are against them. Lion chasers know that impossible odds set the stage for amazing miracles!
And here’s the rest of the story. Finding yourself in a pit with a lion on a snowy day seems to qualify as a bad luck or a bad day. But stop and think about it. Can’t you just see David flipping through resumes looking for a bodyguard?
I majored in security at Jerusalem U. Nope. I did an internship with the Temple guard. Don’t call us we’ll call you. I worked for Brinks Armored Chariots. Thanks but no thanks. Then He comes to Benaiah’s resume: I killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day. You’ve gotta admit: that looks awfully good on your resume if you’re applying for a bodyguard position with the king of Israel.
What seemed like a bad break turned into a big break and those impossible odds set the stage for his entire military career!
I think there is part of us that wants God to reduce the odds. We like situations where the odds are in our favor. But sometimes God allows the odds to be stacked against you so He can reveal more of His glory!
Maybe Benaiah knew he wasn’t outnumbered by the Moabites. He had the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit on His side! And maybe Benaiah knew that a lion was no match for the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
How big is your God?
Is He bigger than your biggest problem? Is He bigger than your worst failure? Is He bigger than your greatest fear?
Incomprehensible
Let me lay a foundation for the rest of this series. I want to share with you the linchpin in my theology. This is ground zero. Everything else that I believe is supported by this foundation—Isaiah 55:8-9.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. In the time it takes you to snap your fingers, light circumnavigates the globe half a dozen times. That’s faster that fast. Let me try to put it in perspective. The sun is 93 million miles away. If you could drive to the sun traveling 65 mph, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year—no pit stops, no rest stops, no gas stops—it would take you 163 years to get there! That is a long ways away! But our sunlight is only eight minutes old. The warmth you feel on a sunny day is light that left the surface of the sun eight minutes ago.
Now here’s the thing. Our sun is the nearest star in our galaxy! But astrophysicists at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have discovered galaxies 13.2 billion light-years away! If you do the math, one light-year is equivalent to 5.88 trillion miles. So the furthest galaxy is 13.2 billion times 5.88 trillion miles away!
That distance is absolutely incomprehensible. And guess what? God says that is about the distance between our thoughts and His thought, our ways and His ways! Your best thought about God on your best day falls 13.2 billion light-years short of how great and how good God really is! We underestimate God by 13.2 billion light-years! God is 13.2 billion light-years bigger than your wildest imagination!
The Crusade Against Religion
Not long ago I read a Wired magazine article. The cover story was titled, The New Atheism: No heaven. No Hell. Just Science. It was subtitled The Crusade against Religion.
The article high-lighted two best-selling books and authors—The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. If it wasn’t so ironic, it’d be sad that two of the best-selling books in the religion genre are anti-religion!
The article in Wired magazine starts out this way: “[The New Atheists] condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it’s evil.”
They have every right to say that. But I have every right to defend my faith! My faith may not be logical or rational, but it’s not illogical or irrational either. My faith is super-rational and super-logical. In other words, it goes beyond human logic.
Here is the mistake Dawkins and Harris make. They refuse to believe what they can’t comprehend. They reject whatever doesn’t fit within the confines of their cerebral cortex. And I don’t think that makes you smart. I think it makes you small-minded. In fact, if I’m being straight-up, I think it makes you arrogant. I just think the smartest people in the world are the people who know how much they don’t know!
Cognitive Categories
Not long ago, someone forwarded me a study that was released by a Florida State University Professor named Doron Nof. You gotta love the title: Is there a Paleolimnological Explanation for Walking on Water on the Sea of Galilee?
This professor is one of the foremost experts in oceanography and limnology. He argues that there may have been a unique combination of atmospheric conditions that caused patches of floating ice on the Sea of Galilee. You can guess where this is going. Nof surmises that maybe Jesus didn’t walk on water. Maybe he was surfing on a patch of floating ice. For what it’s worth, Nof calculates that the chances of this floating ice phenomenon even happening as once every 1,000 years.
Here’s what I think. I think Jesus walked on water because Scripture says that Jesus walked on water. But I’ve got to admit that balancing on a patch of floating ice all the way to the middle of the sea of Galilee in the middle of the night with high waves and low visibility seems almost as miraculous as walking on water!
When we get to heaven I think there will be instant replays sort of like ESPN sports center. And if I had to pick between them, I’m not sure which I’d rather see: walking on water or surfing on ice!
Doron Nof says, “As natural scientists, we simply explain that unique freezing processes probably happened in that region a handful of times during the last 12,000 years. We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account.”
Here’s what is happening here from a neurological perspective.
Doron Nof is a naturalist. He doesn’t have a cognitive category for the miracles so he is trying to make a miraculous account in Scripture fit his pre-existing cognitive categories.
For what it’s worth, there was this other scientist named Albert Einstein who said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.”
Incomprehensibility
What I’m trying to say is this: God doesn’t fit within the confines of the cerebral cortex. And that drives us crazy because part of wants a god we can comprehend and a god we can control. But God is incomprehensible and uncontrollable!
And we have a choice to make. Either we can embrace the mystery and majesty of God and celebrate what we cannot comprehend or control. Or we can create God in our image. The technical term is anthropomorphism. We downsize God; give Him human characteristics; and what we end up with a flannel graph god—a god we can control and comprehend. In the words of A.W. Tozer: “The end result is a God who can never surprise us, never astonish us, never overwhelm us, never transcend us.”
Cut-and-Paste Christianity
Thomas Jefferson loved the teachings of Jesus. In fact, he said they were “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”
But Thomas Jefferson was a child of the Enlightenment. He didn’t have a cognitive category for miracles so he literally took a pair of scissors and cut them out of his King James Bible. It took him two or three nights. And by the time he was done he cut out the virgin birth. He cut out the angels. And He cut out the resurrection.
Jefferson extracted every miracle and the end result was a book titled the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth or what is commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible.
Now here’s the deal. Some of us sort of scoff at Jefferson! You can’t pick and choose. You can’t cut and paste. You can’t do that to the Bible. But listen to me. And while most of us would never take a pair of scissors and physically cut verses out of our Bibles, we do what Jefferson did. We ignore certain verses. We avoid certain verses. There are verses that never get integrated into our world view. And we may not cut them out with scissors, but our god gets smaller and smaller and smaller. We practice what I would call cut-and-paste Christianity.
We believe what we can comprehend with our cerebral cortex and we embrace what we can control.
I think one of two things happen over the course of time. Either our theology conforms to our reality and our god gets smaller and smaller or our reality conforms to our theology and God gets bigger and bigger!
Magnify the Lord
At the end of Prince Caspian, one of the books in the Chronicles of Narnia series, there is a great dialogue between Lucy and Aslan—the lion who is the Christ-figure in the book. They haven’t seen each other in over a year and Lucy says: “Aslan, you’re bigger.” Aslan says, “That is because you are older, little one.” She says, “Not because you are?” And Aslan says, “I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”
So it is with our relationship with God: the more we grow the bigger God gets.
In Psalm 34:3, David says: “O magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name forever.”
The word magnify means “to enlarge.”
We have a copier in our office that allows us to reduce or enlarge images. If we ignore God he gets reduced in size—He gets smaller and smaller and smaller until all that’s left is a thumbnail image.
But here is what happens when we read Scripture—it’s like hitting the enlarge button on the copier. The image of God gets bigger. The same thing happens when we pray—our problems get smaller and God gets bigger. When we worship God it is like hitting that enlarge button—God gets bigger and bigger. I think the same thing happens when we go on a mission trip or using our spiritual gifts to serve God. God gets bigger and bigger!
How big is your God? Is he bigger than your biggest problem? Is He bigger than your worst failure? Is he bigger than your greatest fear? Is your God bigger than a 500 pound lion?
G.K. Chesterton said, “How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be; if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos.”
The series is based on the book In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. You can purchase a copy online @ http://www.sermoncentralbookstore.com/sermoncentral/item.In-a-Pit-with-a-Lion-on-a-Snowy-Day-How-to-Survive-and-Thriv.9781590527153.htm. Or download a free PDF of the first chapter @ chasethelion.com.
