It Isn't Nonsense
Definition Fish Story:
An exaggerated story : a story that is so strange or surprising that it seems very unlikely to be true. He told a ridiculous fish story about a swarm of giant mosquitoes.
Well, I've got quite a Fish Story for you! A true Fish Story.
A child of an aqcaintance, a kindergartener, is given to telling tall tales. Recently, he told a story to his classmates about catching 100 catfish in his back yard, some of them with his own bare hands. When his teacher questioned him about it, he insisted it was all true.
So the teacher decided to take it up with his mother, expecting her to refute the story. Instead, the mom said it was a crazy, true thing, and even had some pictures with him holding a catfish in his hands and grinning from ear to ear.
Apparently, where they live there are two ponds on a hill just behind their property, one situated just above the other. Recently, after some extreme rainfalll, the upper pond overflowed its banks, spilling over and downhill to the second, already swollen pond, which in turn then overflowed into their back yard, turning the entire yard into a two to three inch deep mud puddle full of catfish. Okay, so mayber there weren't a hundred fish flapping about in the yard, but there were many, MANY fish there -- enough that, to a young child, would appear to be a hundred.
To the ears of the teacher, who did not with her own eyes witness the event, his story sounded like nonsense.
Surely, as the women returned from the tomb that first Easter morning, proclaiming the news of the resurrected Lord, their claims were met with incredulity -- a mere Fish Story -- baseless fantasy. As the definition goes, to the recipients of the news, it was nothing more than "an exaggerated story : a story that is so strange or surprising that it seems very unlikely to be true."
Luke 24 (NIV):
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8 Then they remembered his words.
9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
Oh, but it WAS true! And anyone with enough curiosity, who cared to know its veracity, could check it out and see for themselves. Such was the case with Peter,
Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
In a world of skeptics, be a Peter. Run to the tomb to see for yourself!
Grace Is Just Too Easy
Those who work hard to earn their salvation often respond to the message of grace with, “If that were true, if it really were a free gift with no strings attached, I’d accept it and then do whatever I wanted.”
What such a response reveals is that serving God isn't what they don't really want to be doing; they're only doing it to appease God.
Of course, such a reaction fails to comprehend the nature of the gift itself. The gift isn't a license to do whatever we want but a deposit of love that brings with it a whole new set of desires. Those who receive this gift are energized by the presence of the Holy Spirit to love God as freely as they have been loved by God. The gift of eternal life isn't replacing legalism with license, it's replacing legalism with love.
The lack of self-awareness among those who feel this way is truly astounding. Without realizing it, they are freely admitting that without the threat of God’s judgment, they would lack the motivation to please God. They are of the opinion that they need fear in order to keep them from going off the rails. What they don't realize is that God doesn't want their fear, He wants their love.
Just doing what we want isn’t love. Serving God after receiving salvation as a gift is love.
"Jesus replied, 'Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again'" (John 3:3).
One In One Hundred Claim Virgin Birth
It's hard to imagine anyone making a serious claim of a virgin conception. Right? Wrong! Did you know that nearly one percent of women in the US claim to have conceived as virgins?
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill analyzed data from thousands of young women over the course of a decade and a half and found that nearly 1 in 100 claim to have conceived without ever having had sexual relations (for obvious reasons, the study excluded those conceptions attributed to in vitro fertilization, etc.).
The researchers tell us that such things as fallible memory, delusion, denial, and wishful thinking can all "cause people to err in what they tell scientists" (not to mention outright deception).
It appears that Joseph wasn't the only one who had to weigh the claims of a pregnant "virgin."
We hear a statistic like this and we simply can't believe that anyone, much less one-in-a-hundred someones would ever make such a claim. Such reports are met with more than skepticism; they're met with sarcasm and cynicism.
Mary lived most of her adult life with people believing that either her memory was fallible, her thoughts were delusional or she was simply a liar. No doubt, throughout most of Mary's adult life she had to endure the sneers and jeers, the rumors and suspicions of a skeptical world.
As incredible as Mary's claim would have been 2000 years ago, we have even more cause to be skeptical in our age of science and advanced medicine. But unlike those who first heard Mary's incredible story, we also have the vantage point of history from which to judge her. Looking back we can see how the resurrection of her first born son from the dead not only changed the world, it must have brought Mary a tremendous sense of vindication. One in a hundred may make the claim but only one in the annuals of human history has ever given us reason to believe it.
"Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14).