Saturday Morning Sermon (III)

Here's another excerpt from our sermon series in Acts.  The text was Acts 14:8-23. Paul and Barnabas visit Lystra:

There’s this theologian named T. F. Torrance—he’s one of the deepest thinkers about God I’ve ever read—and he’s had a pretty major impact on my own understanding of God.

Well: T. F. Torrance served in North Africa during World War II. He was hoping to be a chaplain, but instead they made him head of “Huts and Canteens,” which meant he spent most of his time delivering supplies to troops in the field; which was okay, actually, because he loved ministering to the soldiers on the front line.

So: in October, 1944, he served as a stretcher-bearer during an assault on San Martino-Sogliano, in Italy. They were under heavy fire all night, and in the morning, Torrance had an experience that haunted him the rest of his life. He says, “When daylight filtered through, I came across a young soldier, a Private Philips, who was barely 20 years old, lying in the mud.” He was mortally wounded and didn’t have long to live, so Torrance knelt with him on the ground. As they sat there in that death-watch, at one point Private Philips said, ‘Padre, is God really like Jesus.’”

Is God really like Jesus? Torrance writes: “I assured him that he was—the only God there is, the God who had come to us in Jesus ... and poured out his love to us as our saviour. As I prayed and commended him to the Lord Jesus, he passed away.”

I don’t want this to sound at all flippant, and I guess I’ll only know for sure when my time comes, but I think that I would be able to die in peace, knowing that when I see God, he’ll be like Jesus.

But like I say, Private Philip’s question left a lasting impression on Torrance. Later he would write these words about the experience: “There is no hidden God lurking behind the back of Jesus... but only the one, Lord God, who became incarnate in him.” Jesus himself said it more simply still: “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.”

I’m telling you this today, for the same reason Paul said it to those Lystrians that day, who were trying to sacrifice a bull to him because they were under the wrong impression about God.

Listen: if you’ve been struggling under the wrong impression about God—that God doesn’t care and can’t be trusted, that he’s out to get you, or doesn’t want anything to do with you—that “the Father up above will squish you like a bug”—if you’ve been living with these impressions of God—or worse—then this is your invitation today: look into the face of Jesus Christ, and let God make a lasting impression on your life.

Because the Gospel heals our wrong impressions of God.