Running through most of North America is a highland that separates the waters flowing east and west. It's called the "Continental Divide" and runs through Central America and Mexico, crossing New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, all the way up into Canada through British Columbia and Alberta."
I've heard that in the Canadian Rockies, someone erected a little arch with the words "The Great Divide" posted above it. The point is that rain falling from the same shower is divided at that arch. To the human eye, it may seem small and insignificant—but it is not. Rain that falls down one side of that small arch joins river systems that flow out eastward into the Atlantic Ocean. Rain that falls on the other side of the arch flows westward eventually into the Pacific. The same clouds, the same rain—but the destinies are at opposite ends.
This becomes, for us, a picture of peoples' various encounters with Jesus. According to the New Testament, Jesus is the ultimate "Great Divide." In John 3:18, Jesus said, "Whoever believes in the Son is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." It is quite a claim. Jesus is saying that all who meet him seal their eternal destiny in the way they respond to him. He's saying that we cannot be neutral about him. We all must go one way or the other.
The same sermon, the same circumstances that turn one person from blindness to sight will turn others from the little light they do have to utter spiritual darkness. This sort of divide will take place even during this weekend's sermon. Today the gospel will be proclaimed. When that happens, Jesus declares that all of us show which side of the eternal divide we're on by the way we respond. We have put it this way in Article 10 of our proposed Statement of Faith:
Proposed Statement of Faith Article 10
We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning unbelievers to eternal separation from him and believers to eternal peace in his presence with restored relationships to God, renewed creation, and one another in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of his glorious grace.
Response to God's gospel determines the eternal destiny of every person.
To His glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor