I know it sounds a little different than my normal posts, but it's true. I just wrote a post on my other blog, "BrokeGuysGym", about zombies and how to make a macebell and get in really good shape using it because zombies have been coming up over and over again at the gym. As I was writing that post and having some fun planning for a never-gonna-happen scenario, I started thinking about Jesus...I know it's weird, but it's true. Really I started to think about humanity which naturally led to thinking about Jesus for me. Here's how my thinking played out...
It's crazy how much people like and/or really believe in zombies. I wonder if I can write a sermon about that. There were accounts of the dead rising and walking out of their tombs when Jesus was resurrected, maybe I can make that work into the power of Jesus' resurrection. But, they weren't really the walking dead, they received life. They were the walking living, not the walking dead. Hmmm...I'm not sure that will work. Maybe in Ezekiel 37 where the Valley of Dry Bones came to life. Although, that's a message about God breathing life into the dead. So, really Jesus is not about the dead walking, but about the dead gaining life.
Starting to sound like a sermon now, isn't it?
I started thinking about the threat that God gave Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that went something like this, "Do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil or you will surely die." But when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they didn't die. They lived for hundreds of years. So was this an idle threat? Was the consequence of their actions postponed for a time period beyond the length of our lives today? What was going on here?
It started to sink in when I began thinking about John 10:10: "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." I love this verse. It makes me excited just reading it. That this life we have in Christ is what life is supposed to be. What life was meant to be when God created humanity. This is life. Wait...this is life? What happens without Christ in our lives? Is there life without Jesus? I know that eternal life is only through Jesus, but what about life now?
Maybe when God told Adam that he would surely die if he ate the forbidden fruit, He didn't mean a physical death. Maybe He was talking about the separation that occurs between us and Him because of sin. Maybe he was warning Adam that if he eats this fruit...if he disobeys God, there will be a void between humanity and the Almighty. Maybe God was warning all of us that our sin causes us to lose the life not only in eternity (as if that wasn't enough), but also to lose what life is truly meant to be here on earth...walking with God. Maybe God was warning us that through sin we become the walking dead (zombies). We are moving, breathing, eating, etc., but we aren't really living.
Jesus came to give us life, but not just life...life to the full! I think that spreads beyond eternity into the here and now. Jesus came to give us eternal life, as well as, life here and now. It's not too late. Today is the day of salvation. Jesus came to save us...the zombies. We don't have to be the walking dead. We can have life to the full!
