Edited from a sermon preached at First Baptist Church, Chamois, MO
Not an exact transcription.
Introduction: How many of us can remember a time when we thought, “It doesn’t get any better than this?” I can think of a couple. One such instance happened back in the early 90’s when I was in the military, stationed in southern California. On one Friday evening, my family and I headed to the nearest town for a night out. Arriving, we found a lot—a LOT—of traffic, both on foot and on pavement! We found out this was something like a renaissance fair, where several people dressed in period costume. One young lady had braided her hair so that it fit inside a crocheted holder (I later found out it’s called a “snood”). We spoke with a few of the participants and, for a moment, just about everybody was getting along! I truly thought, it didn’t and couldn’t get any better than that.
A number of years later, I was working in a different state. A local community had an operating railroad that gave excursions on weekends and certain holidays. On the Fourth of July that year, this railroad had an operating steam locomotive—yes, steam!—hauling the train that day. When we got to the end of the line, anybody who wanted to could climb up into the cab. I wasn’t in there for long, but you better believe I thought “it doesn’t get any better than this!”
The Scriptures have any number of instances where the people observing that event could also say “it doesn’t get any better than this”. We’ll look at a few of these. To be sure, there are also any number of times when it could be said, “It can’t get any worse” We’ll skim over a few of those as well. And certainly, there are times when any situation can become the best ever.
Let’s take a look at some of these.
1 Times when it couldn’t have been any better
How long is eternity? How far back can you or I go into the past? Sure, we hear about events in the recent and not so recent past; even historical events, but there’s only so far and so much any of us can fathom. We can think of dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of years, maybe even “billions and billions” of years—like a certain speaker or thinker used to say—but, even then, we have to stop.
We can’t go back except only so far. Our minds just can’t comprehend forever.
Even so, there was a time when God said “Let there be light”—and there was! God made the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) and spent the next six days developing His handiwork on this earth. Moses summed it up by saying, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day (Gen. 1:31).”
It didn’t get any better than that!
And something we’ll never have on this earth is the privilege Adam and Eve enjoyed absolute innocence, being made perfect and even better, they had unbroken fellowship with God. We only have a hint of this, in Genesis 3, when God came to meet with them as He came walking in “the cool of the day”. Sure, we can have fellowship with God—and I hope we do! There’s nothing like it!—but it’s nothing like they enjoyed, There’s an old Gospel song with the words “Nothing between my soul and the Savior” and they could certainly sing that in every bit of truth.
Fellowship with God? It couldn’t be any better than this!
Now, another person who enjoyed fellowship with God lived many years after this. His name was Abram, later Abraham, and this man’s story is still being told thousands of years after the fact. He grew up in “Ur of the Chaldees”, today part of southern Iraq, and how much Abram knew about the True God is anybody’s guess. Something that we do know is that one day God called or spoke to Abram—and Abram listened! When Abram actually became a believer in the One True God, we may never know, but believe he did, and Genesis 15:6 states clearly, “6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness (KJV).”
May I share something about this “transaction”? First, all of us have sinned or missed the mark of God’s perfection. I remember during basic military training, we spent part of one day at the rifle range. Each of us shot about 40 rounds of ammo from various positions (kneeling, standing, and so on) and we were expected to get around 30 “hits” on the targets. As the story went, one trainee had a score of over 50. The person next to him? One. Yeah, you could say somebody really did miss the mark! Now multiply every “miss” by every day of the year and it becomes very clear, very quickly, that we have a lot of sins to answer for! How can we get rid of these?
The answer is so simple—just like Abram, genuinely believe God and He will “count” it to you for righteousness. Several people have explained it like this: you and I, every one of us, have committed our share of sins (and then some!) When Jesus saves our souls, it’s just like Him transferring the account balance of our sins onto His unlimited account of righteousness! He took our debt and gave us His plenty! Any number of figures like this could be used but the concept is the same: God loves us, totally, and promises to take our sins away if we ask Him to.
When Abram listened to God, and believed in Him, it couldn’t get any better than that!
Something to keep in mind, though, was that Abraham and all the other believers in the One True God never seemed to have a structure where they made sacrifices, offerings, and so on. Abraham built several altars and made burnt offerings; Isaac and Jacob did the same thing, and Job made offerings to the LORD on behalf of his children (Job 1:5). It wasn’t until the people of Israel (as Abraham’s descendants through Isaac were known) had endured years of slavery in Egypt, and then left there, before God instructed them to build a place of worship.
This was the tabernacle, at first, and it was built within a year or so after Israel left Egypt. Moses had come to the top of Mount Sinai to speak with God, and on one of those visits, God gave Moses the pattern or blueprints, we might say, of how to build the Tabernacle and the various other items to be used (Exodus 25). Now, when you look at the various layers of animal skins, the Tabernacle probably wasn’t that much for people to look at, but it’s what happened there that made the difference. Once it was finished, something took place that I believe few, if any, would ever forget.
The place was filled with God’s glory! Exodus 40 tells how Moses completed certain things before the Tabernacle was officially “opened for business”, as one might say. Once he did, the text explains that the glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle, so much so that Moses couldn’t even enter the tent!
Israel finally had a central structure where they would bring offerings and sacrifices, plus other things as commanded in the Law. But when the people of Israel saw God’s glory come down and fill the place, it couldn’t be any better than that! When God is pleased, it can’t be any better!
Now move forward about 500 years, Solomon, son of David, is king, and one of the first things he did was build a Temple, also called the house of the LORD. I have to confess, there are times my mind just absolutely glazes over the detail and intricate work that went into the Temple’s construction. Think how much cedar wood was used and how long it took to carve all the carvings on that wood! 1 Kings 6 has more info than I can share in this message. Let me encourage you to read that chapter, but slowly—there’s a lot of detail in it.
But the people of Israel were rewarded for all their hard work in building the Temple. Once it was finished, Solomon led the nation in a dedication service. One of the most beautiful prayers ever recorded was the prayer of Solomon in 1 Kings 8 and you could tell, he meant every word.
And the result? The glory of the LORD filled the Temple, just as the glory had filled the Tabernacle years before. Any number of Israelites were there, to see something that none of them had ever experienced before, and would never see again. But when they saw the glory of the LORD fill the place, they knew it could never be better than anything else!
Or could it?
Can you believe it, when the Creator of the universe was born into this world as an infant? Sure enough, that’s what happened one night. Luke tells us in chapter 2 of his Gospel how Joseph and Mary made their way from Nazareth to Bethlehem, following a government decree. While they were there, the baby boy, Jesus, the Messiah! Savior of the world!, was born. Luke adds that an angel of the Lord told a group of shepherds that the Christ, the Messiah was born. Not only that, but soon afterward, a “multitude of the heavenly host” was praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men (Luke 2:13-14, KJV)”
Now, you say, could it get any better than this?
I would have to say, yes, it could! Certainly it was important for the Lord Jesus Christ to be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14 mentioned this), and it was also important that Jesus never commit sin (even though He was tempted, Matthew 4 and Luke 4), also that He die for our sins (Isaiah 53 and other Scriptures). But unless He rose from the dead, physically and bodily, we could have no real hope of salvation. Paul speaks of this at length in 1 Corinthians 15 and said very simply that if Christ had not been raised, our hope would be in vain (1 Cor. 15:12-18).
But He did! He is ALIVE! And Paul gave a list of occasions when various people saw the Risen Lord—and not all at the same time.
In a word, it didn’t get any better than that! Christ died for our sins, but was raised from the dead! And He, Jesus, is still living, ever living to “make intercession” for those who believe!
It would be hard to take anything away from this, but—there were and are any number of times when things couldn’t get any worse. Let’s take a look at some of these:
Earlier we mentioned that when God had finished His creation, it was “all very good (Genesis 1:31)”. Something happened after this, and this involved a number of God’s own created beings, the angels. We aren’t given many details but Lucifer, one of the highest angelic beings, rebelled against God and received the sentence of eternal separation from God. There are two passages in the Old Testament which shed a bit of light on this, parts of Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Something to keep in mind is that even though the prophet is speaking to an earthly person, God is extending the message to the angelic person who is the ultimate subject. As bad as the kings of Babylon and Tyre were in real life, Satan, the angelic being in view, was many times worse.
And when Lucifer—plus any number of additional angels—rebelled against God, it could hardly be any worse. God’s own creation, God’s own assistants, the created ones rebelling against the Creator? No, it could hardly get any worse.
Still, it did. The last part of the original creation, Adam and Eve (yes, I believe both of these were real, literal people), enjoyed something none of us will ever have, and that was total innocence along with unbroken fellowship with the Lord. Most of us know the rest of the story, how that Eve was deceived, and Adam chose to eat the forbidden fruit with her, and they brought sin upon all of us (Romans 5:12). Part of what happened after this is spelled out in Genesis 3.
It wasn’t pretty. And I’m pretty sure, Adam and Eve thought it couldn’t get any worse.
Sure enough, though, it did, and Adam, at least, lived to see things become a lot worse. They both lived to see their firstborn son, Cain, kill his brother, Abel (see Genesis 4) and they lived to see the world God had made become filled with violence (Genesis 6:1-7). Finally, God said “I’ve had enough” and destroyed the entire earth by means of a worldwide flood. Only Noah, his wife, sons, and their wives survived the destruction by taking refuge in the Ark.
It was an entirely different world when these eight people stepped off the Ark. How much Noah and his family remembered of the old world is unknown, but one thing was for sure—there was no going back. The curses pronounced on Adam and Eve were still in effect but God made sure to give Noah some new guidelines. I don’t believe they thought it could get any worse.
They were in for a terrible surprise. Time went on and people created empires. Nimrod was one of the most famous of those early days. Even worse, those who knew God walked away from Him and nearly the whole world embraced the worship of idols. Beyond that, deviant life styles were even condoned! Paul described this in general terms in Romans 1:18-32.
Eventually God chose Abram, later Abraham, and his descendants became the nation of Israel. The nation started off worshiping the One True God, the God of Abraham, but sadly most of these people, whom God wanted to be His examples, also rejected God and worshiped idols just like the rest of the world. God sent prophets to explain His offers: acceptance and forgiveness if they would repent and turn back to Him; punishment and exile to various parts of the world if they did not. They did not, and the Israelites were scattered over much of central and southwest Asia. The list of where they of the northern kingdom were taken is in 2 Kings 17 and the last few chapters of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles for those of Judah.
The nation whom God had raised up to honor Him had rejected Him and now, instead of the land of promise, were living in the land of penalty or punishment.
Did they think it couldn’t get any worse? There is something that can’t get much worse and that’s when a person crosses the line past the age of accountability. This is of course different for every person, but it’s true that eventually everyone becomes aware of the need to be saved by the grace of God. It’s ultimately sad, and doesn’t get worse, when a person enters that part of his or her life and decides to do nothing about it. Each person may have a reason why they choose not to believe but there’s one thing in common: none of them are any good.
And that leads us to the worst possible situation. According to Revelation 20, every person who died, having rejected God’s gift of salvation, will be judged according to his or her deeds. Not too bad, you think? Then take a look at this verse: “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:15, KJV).”
This means simply that every “lost” person—who died unsaved, never accepting the Gift of Salvation—will be thrown, bodily, into a lake of fire. Forever (see Rev. 20:10). To be cast into a lake of burning fire, and cast away from God’s presence—forever—would be the worst thing ever to happen to a person. Does this apply to you?
If so, you and I and all people still have time, while we’re alive on this earth, to make a positive change. Let me share with you how it’s possible to make things the best ever!
First, it can be the best when an unsaved person repents of his or her sin and receives the gift of salvation! So many verses explain this, including Romans 10:9-10. Anyone who genuinely comes to Jesus in good faith (in other words, they’re serious about wanting to be saved) will never be turned away! And it would be hard to beat, knowing your sins are forgiven and you’ll be on your way to Heaven when this life is over.
But even believers sin, and when that happens, there’s no need to do anything except repent of that sin. Repent simply means change the mind, agreeing with God that “I have sinned” and requesting Him to forgive that sin. I love 1 John 1:9, where the Apostle John told us that if any of us confesses our sins, He (Jesus) is faithful and just to cleanse us from that (or any) sin! When you’ve been right with God, but somehow got “wrong”, with Him, there’s hardly an experience that can be any better than knowing our Lord has forgiven that sin!
Now, these are hard to beat for the “here and now” but let’s recall that there’s a whole lot more to life than just this time we have on earth. One day in the future, every believer will stand before the Lord to give an account of our deeds and to receive rewards for our service down here (compare 2 Corinthians 5:10 with 1 Corinthians 3:10-15). I hope to hear the Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” or words to that effect. After all, the only reason any of us will ever see Heaven is by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Still, there is one further occasion when it will never get be any better. That day is still in the future, when the Lord Jesus Christ will return to this earth and be King of kings and Lord of lords for 1000 years! When that period is complete, there will be new heavens and a new earth, no more sin or anything to cause problems (Revelation 21-22)! Every believer will be with the Lord Jesus Christ forever and nothing will come between Him and us.
And when that day comes, literally, it won’t be any better than that!
Are you ready for that day? If not, you can be!
Scripture quotations taken from the King James Version of the Bible (KJV),
