John Bevere - Jesus, The Greatest of All Time
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If you’ve got someone they call an athlete the GOAT (Greatest of All Time), I’ll tell you Jesus is the greatest of all time. All right? Just read chapter 6, and I want to dive deeper into this one. I’m going to kind of go off script and give you a little backstage view of what’s going on here. The statement we make that’s so important is that our holy fear grows proportionally to our comprehension of God’s greatness. In other words, the more we understand how great He is, the more our holy fear grows. God came to the place where He asked His people Israel a question. He said, «To whom will you compare Me? Who is My equal?»
You know, I remember about 25 years ago when my kids were probably 10 to 11 years old, down to three, and I was hearing about this certain NBA player far too much. I mean, he was the most popular basketball player probably in the history of the NBA, and our boys were talking about him. There was a poster in one of my son’s rooms, and I just got fed up with hearing about this NBA player. I thought, «Gosh, my boys are getting so fixated on his talents.» We were on the East Coast, and I remember the church put us up in a hotel right by the beach. The waves were big that day in the Atlantic Ocean; they were tossing them around everywhere. When we came back to the room, I thought this was my chance. I left the sliding door of the hotel room open so they could hear the pounding waves that had just been tossing them around, and I said, «Guys, that’s a pretty powerful ocean out there.»
They were all wrapped in their blankets and said, «Yeah, it is, Dad.» I said, «It’s pretty big too, isn’t it?» They agreed, «Yeah, it is.» I asked, «Do you know you can only see one mile out there? That ocean goes another 4,000 miles, and not only that, it’s not even the biggest ocean. There’s another one bigger on the other side of the country, and there are two other oceans beside that.» I said, «Guys, do you know that God weighed every drop of that water in those four oceans in the palm of His hands?» They were like, «Whoa!»
So then I took them to outer space and started giving them a simplistic view of outer space because the Bible says, «The heavens declare His glory,» or His greatness. I said, «Guys, the sun—the sun that you love so much that warms our day and makes it possible for you to be on the beach—is a pretty cool sun, isn’t it?» They said, «Yeah!» I asked, «Do you know how far away it is?» They said, «No.» I explained, «If we got on a jet plane, it would take us 21 years to fly there nonstop.» They were like, «Whoa!» I said, «Now, the closest star to our Earth is 4.3 light-years away.» They were like, «What’s a light-year?» I said, «A light-year is how fast light travels in one year.» They were like, «Okay.» I said, «Do you know how fast light travels?» They said, «No.»
I explained, «It travels at 670 million miles per hour. Let me tell you how fast that is, guys. It takes light 8 minutes and 20 seconds to get to the Earth. It would take a jet airplane 21 years.» They were amazed. I continued, «Well, the nearest star to us, the closest star other than the sun, is Alpha Centauri, and it’s 4.3 light-years away. If you fly on an airplane to Alpha Centauri, do you know how long it will take you, guys?» I said, «It will take you 51 billion years.» They were like, «Whoa! Really?» I then said, «Guess what? We’re in this little tiny galaxy in the universe, and we have about 100 million stars in our galaxy. Did you know that the farthest star from our Earth in our galaxy is 700,000 light-years away? That star that takes 51 billion years is only four light-years away—700,000!» By this time, their minds were blown. I said, «Now you’re impressed that a guy can palm a basketball and jump from the 15-foot line to put a ball in the basket?» They responded, «Dad, we get it!»
You know what happened in our household? Michael Jordan was still liked by my boys, but he wasn’t out of place. The way we boast through social media, mainstream media, and all our outlets today about our athletes, Hollywood stars, scientists, and mega-wealthy businesspeople, the way we brag about them—and the way that information bombards us—can actually take away from our awe of God. I’m not saying don’t notice what people are doing around the Earth, but I am saying keep it in perspective. If you’ve got someone they call an athlete, the GOAT (Greatest of All Time), I’ll tell you Jesus is the greatest of all time because He can measure the universe from one span of His finger to the other. With the span of His hand, God measured the universe. I don’t know any athlete who can come anywhere near close to that. Let’s keep our holy awe of God and keep everything else in perspective.