THE BLACK HOLE: FILLING THE SPIRITUAL VOID
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 10:7
AUGUST 22, 1993
Last month, July 23rd, early in the morning beside a North Carolina highway, James Jordan, the father of Michael Jordan, was murdered, shot through the chest with a .23 caliber pistol as he was napping in the luxury car given to him by his famous son. The body of James Jordan was thrown into a swamp. Many days later it was discovered face down, so badly decomposed it was barely recognizable. At the funeral service, Michael Jordan said that his father, whom he had called “Pops,” had been his very best friend. He said that from his earliest years his father had been his idol, his hero. He said that his father had always been there for him through the years. He said it was impossible to describe the pain that was in his heart, the sense of separation, the knowledge that he would not see his father in this world again. He asked the people to pray for him. He said there was a great hole in his heart. He said, “What do you do when someone cuts a big hole out of your heart?”
Perhaps some of you in the sanctuary this morning can identify very closely with Michael Jordan and how he feels. Perhaps you have lost someone very close to you. Biblically, the Bible tells us that every single person in the world, in the deepest most spiritual sense, has lost a father. It happened in Eden a long, long time ago when sin first entered this world, when men and women first sinned and experienced separation from God. It was not that God had died. It was, the Bible tells us, that we had died. Spiritually we had died. We were fallen in sin and separated from God and there was an emptiness that came to the human heart and the human soul. That is why the Bible tells us that we must be born anew. That is why Jesus Christ came into the world and that is why Jesus Christ said, “I have come that you might have life, that you might have it abundantly.”
You see, God is the source of life. When we are separated from Him, there is some sense in which there is death within. People try to fill the void. People try to find meaning. People try to find fulfillment in many ways. I would like us to examine a few of them this morning.
I think one way that people try to fill the void and to find meaning in life is through human love. They try to find satisfaction and self-esteem and fulfillment through the love of people. Of course, for some people, human love simply means sex.
Yesterday was the birthday of Wilt Chamberlain. He was born on August 21. Wilt Chamberlain, of course, is the 7’1,” 275-pound center for the Los Angeles Lakers, prior to that for the Philadelphia 76ers. He set many NBA records in rebounds and scoring. In his career, Wilt Chamberlain scored more than 30,000 points. Of course, it has been said that he scored more frequently off the court. Wilt Chamberlain, by his own testimony, claims to have had sex with 20,000 women, an overwhelming number—tragic because it represents such a promiscuous lifestyle.
Eight days ago, August 14, was the birthday of Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson, of course, was the 6’9″ guard for the World Champion Los Angeles Lakers, extremely well known in the world of sports and all over the world. I think most of us would like to see Magic Johnson live a long life, but that’s not likely to happen because he’s HIV positive and he is afflicted with the AIDS virus.
According to Arthur Ashe in his book Days of Grace, Magic Johnson once boasted that he had had sex with 2,500 women, almost monkish compared to Wilt Chamberlain, and yet tragic too—tragic because of the promiscuity that it represents.
You know, a couple of weeks ago, Barb and I and Drew and Heather were up in the mountains on a few days of vacation. It was evening time. We turned on the TV and as we were flipping through the channels, we came to MTV which we would not normally have watched, but there was an MTV special on the 7 deadly sins and I just couldn’t resist seeing what MTV would have to say about the 7 deadly sins. They dealt first with the sin of lust. They interviewed rock stars and asked them their opinion regarding the abuse of sex. Many of these rock stars said that they had for many years, practiced one-night stands or had experienced many one-night stands. They said that they had done that because they had felt a need for love and perhaps to try to raise their low self-esteem, but they said in virtually every case each rock star said that it had only produced emptiness and it had only produced a sense of guilt and meaninglessness in their life. You see, even MTV can see that human love, when it’s simply equated with promiscuous sex, does not fill the void and it does not get rid of the meaninglessness and despair. In fact, it only makes the hole larger.
I think most people in the world who look to human love for fulfillment and for a sense of completion look to marriage. They look to a purer expression of human love. There are a lot of men and women the world over who think, “If I can just find the right person… If I can just find Mr. Right or Mrs. Perfect… If I can just find the right person and if we can be married and become best friends and raise kids… If I can just have a family like that, everything will be taken care of and the emptiness and the meaninglessness of life will just go away and I’ll find fulfillment and satisfaction.” But you see, it is not true. It is not as simple as that.
Last night was Barb’s and my anniversary. Barb and I have been married for 22 years. We went to the Macaroni Grill to celebrate down on Arapahoe Road. We thought if we got there at 5:30 we would beat the crowd. We still had an hour wait, but it was a great night. Barb and I just kind of looked back on the years. We thought of the first day of our marriage when we were married 22 years ago yesterday. We thought about that first night when we drove up from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara. We stayed at the Santa Barbara Biltmore, which is a beautiful resort hotel. We talked about how stupid we were. Though we were at the Santa Barbara Biltmore, we were on our way to Yosemite. We did not enjoy any of the amenities and any of the great things that were there at the Biltmore. We just, kind of, in the morning headed out.
We thought about that first night as we were in the hotel room. The phone rang. Someone on the phone (they knew it was our wedding night) said, “Would you like us to give you something to drink?” We didn’t know a whole lot about drinking or wine or champagne then. Of course, we’re real experts now. They said, “Would you like some champagne, or would you like some wine? Would you like something light or dry or maybe something sweet?” I did not know what any of that meant. I remember I just said, “Yes.” There was silence on the phone. Eventually, you know, he said, “Okay, sir.” He hung up and a few minutes later there was a knock at the door, and they had brought a bottle of Dom Perignon. Barb and I did not know what that was. We had never heard of it. We tasted it and didn’t really like it. The next morning, we went to pay the bill and were amazed to see that the bottle of Dom Perignon was more expensive than the room.
Barb and I looked at the start we had in our marriage, and we just marvel at how great the years have been and how much we love each other. It seems to me if ever a marriage was made in heaven, it’s the marriage that Barb and I have and I’m so grateful for Barb and for our kids and our marriage. Our family life has just been wonderful, and yet, you see, if somehow we were to think that marriage could take the place of a relationship with the living God, we would be deceiving ourselves. If somehow, we thought that that marriage was able to compensate or be some kind of a substitute for a vital relationship with Jesus Christ, we’d be living a lie.
Some of you who know a little bit of history here in America might be familiar with the name Madeleine Astor. Madeleine Astor was married to the world-famous multimillionaire John Jacob Astor. They were married in the year 1911. They loved each other very much. The problem was that Madeleine Astor was the daughter of a Brooklyn shipping clerk and she was not acceptable to New York’s high society. Madeleine and John Jacob Astor decided that they would leave the United States and try to live somewhere else. They thought it would be a romantic idea to go and live in Egypt for a while. They moved to Egypt, and they lived there for a period of time.
In 1912, Madeleine Astor became pregnant. The two of them decided that maybe it would be good to go back home and be with the family since she was pregnant. They booked passage to England and there in England they booked passage on the Titanic to take them back to New York. Of course, it was April 15, 1912, when that great ship went down, and John Jacob Astor died. He went down with the ship. Madeleine Astor lived. She was put in a lifeboat with many others, but she was never the same. She had lost the man that she loved more than anyone else in this world. In the subsequent years, she married twice again and both marriages failed as they ended in divorce. Ultimately, in 1936, she committed suicide, taking her own life with an overdose of sleeping pills.
I don’t mean to imply that your marriage might be broken up by a tragic death. I don’t mean to imply that your marriage would end in divorce, but I think we all must admit that there’s a lot of risk in marriage. No matter how happy your marriage is, there’s going to come a day when you’re separated and one of you will arrange for a memorial or funeral service for the other. Of course, you know marriage is not like a Sears battery. It doesn’t come with any guarantee and God wants you to know—even if your marriage seems wonderful—it’s no substitute for a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Human love just can’t take the place of a relationship with God.
I think there are other people who try to fill the void and kind of plug the hole. They try to find satisfaction through career and through career pursuits and career aspirations. I mean is not this true. Aren’t there a lot of people in the world today who are trying to find meaning and life through their career?
Many of you have seen the movie Working Girl starring Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver. Of course, in that movie, Melanie Griffith is pursuing a successful career. A young woman, she has a great deal of talent, but she’s frustrated by Sigourney Weaver. At the movie’s end, Melanie Griffith has achieved some success in her career and she’s kind of climbed up the ladder. She has her own private office. She’s got her feet up on the desk. She has her own personal secretary, and the movie fades out with the music New Jerusalem by Carly Simon. The message is that through your career you can attain the New Jerusalem. Through your career, you can attain fulfillment, satisfaction and through your career, it can all be okay. It is a lie of the evil one.
The Bible does promise a New Jerusalem to all who know God and believe in His Son, Jesus Christ. You will never reach the New Jerusalem through your career. The word “career” comes from the Latin word “charis.” The Latin word “charis” originally meant “to run” and then over time it came to refer to a “racetrack” and then the word “charis” was sometimes used to describe “carriages” and “chariots” that were used on racetracks. Of course, our word “car” or “automobile” also came from that same word “charis.” I think that there is a sense in which a career is a racetrack. I mean for many people, as they enter their career, it is like entering a race and they want to pass people. They want to find success. They want to somehow be first. That’s how it is for many people in this world as they pursue their careers.
I think what God wants us to understand is many people who are successful in their careers, by the world standards, and who ascend and go up that ladder and find themselves at the pinnacle, when it’s all said and done, there’s nothing but emptiness there. No true satisfaction. No true fulfillment.
Some of you perhaps have heard of Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus lived in the 4th and 3rd century before Christ. He was King of Epirus in Greece. He was the second cousin of Alexander the Great. Pyrrhus, just like his second cousin, Alexander the Great, longed to rule the world. If you know a little bit of history from that time, you know that Pyrrhus went to war against Rome. He fought two great battles against the Roman Empire. Pyrrhus actually won both of those battles, largely because of his use of elephants in the combat situation. But though Pyrrhus won both of those battles against Rome, Rome did not give up and Pyrrhus had suffered the loss of most of his troops. After his second victory, when he came home and was congratulated, he said, “One more victory such as these and I will be completely undone.” Of course, many of you today have heard the expression “Pyrrhic victory.” Pyrrhic victory comes from Pyrrhus, who was this King of Epirus so long ago. A pyrrhic victory is a victory that comes at too great of a cost, a victory that comes with too great of a loss, a victory that in effect, produces defeat.
I tell you on the basis of God’s Word that if you are using career and career aspirations to find fulfillment and satisfaction in life, even if you ascend to the top it will be a pyrrhic victory. It will come at too great of a cost, too great of a price. So many people who have ascended in the world of work find that it has come at the cost of their spouse, their children, their family, even their health. Most importantly, God wants us to understand it is no substitute for a real relationship and walk with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
I think there are some people who seek fulfillment through entertainment. They try to plug the hole. They try to fill the void. They try to find satisfaction through entertainment, or at least they try to be so busy with entertainment that they do not have to think about the hole and they don’t have to think about the meaninglessness of life.
In the year 1972, Barb and I went with my mom and dad and with my brothers and their wives to the city of Rome. There we saw the Coliseum, which is more properly known as the Flavian Amphitheater. Of course, it was built in the first century and is almost 2,000 years old. It was there that 50,000 people would fill the amphitheater and watch mock naval battles. They would watch gladiator combat. They would watch men do battle with wild animals. They would go there for entertainment. Of course, the horse and chariot races were not held in the Coliseum. They were held in the Hippodrome. They were held in the Circus Maximus, a massive structure with a field two hundred yards long. The seating surrounding it held 250,000 people. Of course, the Circus Maximus no longer stands in Rome. It’s just a blank field, but you can go to other places in the Greek and Roman world and see hippodromes.
Barb and I were once in Turkey in the city of Aphrodisias and we saw a perfectly preserved hippodrome there in Aphrodisias with the field more than 200 yards long and a stadium structure that held more than 200,000 people. You could see the tunnels where the chariots once came out 2,000 years ago.
Of course, in the Greek and Roman world, there was a great desire for entertainment. In the city of Rome and in many other Greek and Roman cities, there were also the Roman baths. They were the temples, and in those temples parties were held many nights of the week. Of course, I think what I would want you to understand is simply that the need for entertainment has always been in the human heart. Cultures throughout history have sought to entertain themselves. There is nothing wrong with entertainment per se. There is nothing wrong with entertainment in and of itself. Of course, of sports. We have stadiums and arenas to house them and to provide for all the spectators. We have theater with all the plays and musicals and just a variety of entertainment available to all of us. I like entertainment. I’m sure all of you like entertainment, but what a poor substitute for a relationship with God. What a tragic substitute for true meaning in life. Do not just busy yourself with entertainment. Seek a vital relationship with Jesus Christ.
I would say in conclusion… I know that there are some people who—and this might sound strange to you—I think there are some people who actually seek to plug the hole, to fill the void, to compensate for the spiritual emptiness through their physical health. Sociologists and psychologists tell us that in our culture there are thousands of people who have almost turned health into a religion. Somehow, they have told themselves if they can just really work on their health, through diet and exercise and other means, and just focus on their health that somehow it will compensate for the spiritual void. It just does not work.
Of course, diet and exercise can be important. You know, I think God would say to me, if I were a pigged-out couch potato, that I need to take care of my body. God would tell me that I’m abusing the creation and, as the Creator, He’s not pleased and He’s called me to stewardship. I think God would remind me as a Christian that my body is the temple of God and His Holy Spirit has come to dwell within me. I am not to abuse that body. But on the other hand, if I were an obsessive-compulsive health fanatic, I think God would say to me, “Lighten up.”
Remember all the men and women on the Titanic on the night of April 14 who refused the dessert tray. I mean, life is just too short. Life is just too short. I think God wants us to enjoy life just a little bit. He wants us to enjoy life, but do not make the mistake of thinking that bodily exercise can somehow compensate for a spiritual void. Do not turn exercise and health into a religion.
You know, the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and said, “Train yourself in godliness.” He said, “Physical exercise has some value, but spiritual exercise holds value in every way as it holds promise not only for this life, but also for the life to come.” This is God’s great message to us. How desperately we need a relationship with Him. Nothing in your life is more important than your relationship with God. Your career is not as important as your relationship with God. Your spouse, your children are not as important as your relationship with God. Fulfillment only comes through God. If you do not know God, if in your heart right now you know there’s a void and there’s an emptiness there, if you don’t know God, He invites you to come to Him and enter into friendship with Him, enter into relationship with Him through His Son, Jesus Christ, as you embrace Christ as your Lord and Savior.
I think for those of us as Christians, we don’t want to make the mistake of thinking that having accepted Christ everything is okay. That’s just the beginning of the Christian walk and pilgrimage. I mean if you accept Christ, you have forgiveness of sin, and the Holy Spirit has come within you it is true. You are bound for heaven, it is true. But it is also true that we must cultivate our relationship with God if we’re really to find the full measure of fulfillment and satisfaction in life that He has to offer and bring.
You know that one story (and with this we’ll close) that we find in the Bible where Jesus is in Bethany. He comes to the home of Mary and Martha. We read in Luke 10 how Jesus is teaching and Mary comes and just sits at His feet and listens to Him, but Martha is busied with many things. Martha is kind of frustrated by Mary and says, “Mary, why don’t you help me out,” and even comes to Jesus and complains and says that Mary should be helping her. Jesus says to Martha, “Martha, Martha. You are busied with so many things. One thing is necessary. One thing. Mary has chosen the better part.” Of course, that “one thing” is never identified and yet it is clearly seen. That one thing is a relationship with God and a cultivation of that relationship through spiritual growth.
The next 13 verses all deal with prayer. I do not think that is a coincidence. The very next 13 verses deal with the subject of prayer and how, as Christians, we need a devotional life that is consistent where we’re in prayer and in the word and in Christian fellowship that we might cultivate our friendship with God through Christ and find the fulfillment that only God can give. Let us close with a word of prayer.