Filling the Void Jan 2021
Introduction
We live in increasingly extreme times. From the ideologues of political left and right, to antivaxxers, to climate change warriors and deniers, to those who speak as the final authority on their sexuality/gender unquestioning assertiveness is in the atmosphere. Plus, we live in an age when the internet has endowed the human voice to a place of unparalleled greatness, in its own mind at least (Rev 13:5-6). To explain such dogmatism we need to remember that the only difference between nothing and everything in the Word of God (Rom 4:17). As the modern world attempts to live by “bread alone”, denying “every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Matt 4:4), our culture has been plunged into an existential vacuum. Affluent Westerners live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28) as if there was no power beyond this cosmos to hold everything together (Heb 1:3), especially at the level of meaning and final purpose. This is a predictable property of “the world” but the crisis of Western Christianity is that it too strips much biblical teaching of its substance.
God’s Void
God has always had a plan for emptiness. “The earth was without form and void…the Spirit of God was hovering…and God said…and there was…” (Gen 1:2-3, 5). The void existed from the beginning so that the Spirit-Word might act in power to fill it with divine glory (Hab 2:14 cf. Isa 43:5-6). This great goal will in the End be fully achieved (Rev 21:11), but only in a manner paradoxical and unpredictable to the human mind.
Sin Creates the Void Within
In the face of rival gods the Sovereign Lord declares, “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.” (Isa 45:7). This does not mean that God is the author of evil, but it does mean he hands people over to their choices to enter the side of reality under the dominion of darkness (Col 1:13). This began with the Fall in Eden where we fell in “love” (the Greek is agape) with darkness (John 3:19) and climaxed with the betrayal of the light of the world when “Satan entered into” Judas “and it was night” (John 3:27, 30). In his “refusal to hear the Word” (Jer 11:10; 13:10; 19:1; Ezek 2:, 7; 3:11; Zech 7:11; John 5:40) the traitor was the “true son of destruction” (John 17:12) plunged into the abyss of darkness and despair and inevitable suicide. The cause of the epidemic of depression and anxiety in society (https://www.beyondblue.org.au/media/statistics) and teenage suicides etc. have essentially the same cause. Apart from receiving the presence of the Word of life (1 John 1:1) into your heart the void will destroy you, now and forever (2 Thess 2:3; Rev 17:3). This inner emptiness is driving masses of people to ever increasing moral insanities, not because of God’s absolute absence, but through the actions of his hidden presence.
Unavoidable
As someone who the Lord saved from depression and paranoia, I can testify that in an absolute sense there is no void, simply that we just experience darkness as fully real. Paul teaches that the all-substantial Word is un-a-void-able, “the wrath of God is revealed…against all…who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 20 For (God’s) eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” (Rom 1:18, 20), “But I ask, have they not heard?… Indeed they have, for “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”” (Rom 10:14, 18 cf. Job 7:19). The Lord has handed sinners over to their own choices in rejecting his all illuminating glory, handed them over to the darkness of their own choices (John 9:39). Since an existential state of emptiness in unbearable for those made intended for the indwelling divine glory (Ps 8:5) idolatry is inevitable. Calvin called the human heart an “idol factory” (cf. Ezek 14) for he knew the inner void drives us to fill the God-shaped vacuum inside us (Pascal) with pathetic substitutes for the divine splendour. Such self-created alternatives can never fully satisfy. Whilst people everywhere listen to the voice of politicians, “prophets” and a vast array of experts in an endeavour to find substance for life (cf. Luke 12:15), in truth they are wandering aimlessly because there is a “famine of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11-12). As always, the solution is found in the wisdom of the cross.
Look to the Void that Saves
Humanity longs for the certitude of the categorically convinced speaker, whether a (narcissistic) Trump or an (autistic) Greta Thunberg, but only the cross can deliver us from the void within. Convinced by celebrity and popularity (Twitter, Instagram) and needing to fill their inner emptiness the delusional false prophets of today, secular or Pentecostal, must believe they are right. But the Son of the Father savingly becomes, to his own heart, a man “devoid of the Spirit” (Jude 19) stripped of the testimony of God. “My God…Why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Jesus becomes the void (2 Cor 5:21) so that he might enter the everlasting glory of resurrection (Rom 6:4) on our behalf. Only in Christ can we delivered from the terror of the void within and all the idols which bind.
Faith in the Dark Night
Assured in the dead, raised and ascended Lord Paul assures us, “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)” (Rom 10:6-8). This becomes our testimony when we have passed, repeatedly, through the God-ordained dark night of the soul, and been delivered into resurrection presence, until next time (cf. 2 Cor 1:8-10). Those who have walked this way of maturity know the void belongs to the Lord and in Christ every darkness has been set apart for God’s glorious and eternal purposes (John 17:19). Hallelujah. Amen.
Conclusion
If I am discerning correctly, an unparalleled wisdom and revelation for others is coming in our time. The Lord has released the void before a great advance of the Light. I believe that a generation of young people is arising who have witnessed around them the cost of godlessness and are sick, tired, and bored by the lack of substance in the words they are hearing in church Sunday after Sunday with the unurgent same pitch. They will hunger and thirst for the word of righteousness and shall be satisfied (Matt 5:6). God will sovereignly do this.
My final plea is to mainstream Western Christianity. Because of an unfailing commitment to the primacy of happiness, the Western Church wants both bread and the Word from the mouth the Lord. The cross reveals this to be impossible. It is time to repent for wanting to have it both ways; may our gracious God forgive us. “Come quickly Lord Jesus” (1 Cor 16:22; Rev 22:12, 20)!