My Birthday // Dying to Live, Part 3

A few weeks ago, I celebrated one of those milestone birthdays. So what.  We all have a birthday.  Easy though to get self-absorbed about things – to imagine somehow that we’re at the centre of the universe.  Easier it turns out, than many of us think.

As I said, a few weeks ago, I celebrated one of those milestone birthdays ... 66 years since I breathed my first breath. So I was thinking … whoa, stop, don’t turn it off! I’m not going to talk about myself for the next ten minutes; I was just trying to make a point.

You know those people in life who only ever talk about themselves? Their life, what’s going on in their world, they never stop. They never even think to ask you, “How are you going, what’s going on in your world, how are you feeling?” No, no, they're so utterly self absorbed it wouldn’t even enter their mind. Sure it’s my birthday today, that’s nice, happy birthday Berni, but sometime in the next three hundred and sixty five days you’re gong to have a birthday too. And it’s the same with everyone else that you and I know. Contrary to popular belief the universe does not revolve around you or me.

Let me introduce you to a young polish astronomer called Nick. He came up with a radical theory, in fact so radical that he was branded a heretic by the church. Nick’s last name is Copernicus. Now young Nick, between about 1517 and 1530 wrote a treatise called, “On the Revolution of Celestial Spheres”. Up until then people basically believed that the earth was in the centre of the universe and that all the other heavenly bodies, all the stars and the sun and the moon, everything else revolved around the earth. And Copernicus thought about this and he looked at how the other planets were moving and he deduced that the sun was at the centre of our solar system, and that the earth was just one of the planets revolving around the sun.

Now, a full century later in the ecclesiastical trial of Galileo, (that means that the church tried him for heresy) here’s another great scientist who believed in the Capernaum theory. They officially suppressed Copernicus’s idea that the earth wasn’t in the centre of the universe, that in fact the sun was in the centre of our solar system. So the church was geocentric, the earth is in the centre, and the scientists were heliocentric, the sun is in the centre and they were called heretics.

Now, today any 7 year old kid knows that the earth revolves around the sun. It rotates on its axis, the axis is tilted at 23 ½ degrees, that’s why we have the seasons. But in the 16th and 17th Centuries that kind of thinking was heretical.

"Berni, why the history lesson?" Because in a sense it’s exactly the same today. The more affluent a society becomes the more entrenched becomes the theory that I or you are in the centre of the universe. You challenge that; you say I don’t think it's working that well. You dare to suggest that there’s a God who sent His Son to die for you and me, and the world will call you a heretic. But we know that this self-centric thing doesn’t work any better than the earth-centric view of the universe explains the movement of all these bodies in the sky. Just doesn’t work!

And people end up living a lie that is self absorbing. We talked about those people at the beginning of the program. You know the sort of people who only ever talk about themselves. We know it doesn’t work because they’re boring. You can’t stand hanging around those people for more than ten minutes.

There’s a sea called the Dead Sea, and the reason that it’s called the Dead Sea is because it has the Jordan River flowing into it, but it doesn’t have any outflows, so all this water is flowing in, nothing flowing out. It’s seven times saltier than the ocean, its twenty seven per cent solid substances in the water. It supports no life whatsoever, none! Because for there to be life there needs to be an inflow and there needs to be an outflow. But unfortunately the Dead Sea only has an inflow, and the same is true of people. If you put yourself at the centre and expect everything to flow in there’s no life at all. That’s why!

We’re not designed to be like the Dead Sea, it’s a paradox. The world’s saying put yourself at the centre let everything flow in, it doesn’t work! People are dying to live an exciting, people are dying to have a life that’s just worth living. We all want a great life, but in a sense we have to die to live, in a sense we have to accept that there’s got to be an out flow, that life has to be about things flowing out rather than things just flowing in.

Jesus said, “Come to me, come to me and drink, come to me and drink this living water.” He wasn’t talking about the Dead Sea! And then he said:

Out of your belly will run rivers of living water.

Rivers! Not a trickle, not a stream, not one river, RIVERS of living water. Let me ask you something, is your life one of those lives where you try and pour stuff in, but you never give anything out and if it is how satisfying is that? How much, let me be really direct here, how much does your life represent the circumference of the Dead Sea? Where we expect everything to flow in, we’re not prepared to give anything out, we wonder, we wonder why life isn’t worth living. We wonder why this doesn’t support abundant life.

Who or what is at the centre of your universe? Are you at the centre of your universe? Am I at the centre of my universe? Because if that’s the model that we have dumped on our head it’s how we live our life, it’s going to be like the Dead Sea. It’s not going to support abundant life, in fact it won’t support any life, it will be devoid of any satisfaction – that’s the paradox.

You try and stuffing stuff in but it never satisfies. Are we at the centre of our universe or is God at the centre of our universe? There are people who will say, “Berni, you’re a loony, you know, talking about God in this day and age, come on!” God is no less real than the sun that the earth rotates around, and it doesn’t matter how much they tried to suppress Copernicus' theory, it doesn’t matter how much they said he was a heretic, it doesn’t matter how much they gave Galileo a hard time for believing it – it was still true. The sun is at the centre of our solar system and we are one of the planets that revolve around us.

God has a Son … God has a Son called Jesus and it doesn’t matter how much people say, “Oh yeah that’s all old fashioned, I’m not going to listen to that, you’re a fundamentalist.” Doesn’t matter how much they say that, it doesn’t change the truth, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

And when we look at this model of putting ourselves in the centre, when we look at the Dead Sea approach, does it work? Does it work, is it any better than someone who says that the earth is at the centre of the universe, just look around, does it work? Look around at the wars that are being fought, look around at the intolerance, look around at the greed and the selfishness, look around at the government systems that promote the notion of the only thing that matters in government is improving financial wellbeing. Does it work? Do we feel any better off?

Who’s at the centre of your universe? Is it you or is it God? Is it you? Is it Jesus? Who do you want to have at the centre of your universe? What sort of life do you want to have? A Dead Sea life or the life that Jesus gives? The life that has rivers of living water flowing from God into you and from you out to other people? What sort of a life do you want? Tomorrow on "A Different Perspective" we’ll take a look at how to make the transition.