There has never been a perfect bracket in the history of the NCAA basketball tournament. No man or woman has picked the winners and participants of every game including the national champion. The NCAA tracks brackets turned into major outlets. Over 34-million were turned in this year, and after just one round of the tournament, there are a grant total of 181 brackets still intact*.
So, what’s the point? Human beings can only know so much about basketball. The same is true of God. Take all the experts, commentators, coaches, players, and guys clicking on teams on a webpage, and you still cannot come up with 64 winning teams. If man can take all the information available and still have a limited and eventually false understanding about a game, why do they think they can know everything about God?
There are things even a casual fan can learn about the field of 64. The game has rules. There are lines for out-of-bounds and three-point shots. Most of what you might learn from watching the games might even be correct. But it is clear people have a limited understanding of basketball.
The Bible tells us there are things we can know about God from just watching. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his 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.”-Romans 1:19-20. In basketball and Christianity, we can learn some things from observation. But for a perfect 64=and-0, we need divine intervention.
God has done just that by preserving his word on the pages of the Bible. We can know exactly what he wants us to do or not. We know about his love for us expressed in the sacrifice of his Son on the cross for our sins. How to love my neighbor, what to do in worship, what is our heavenly Father like, and how to serve Jesus; are all laid out so we can know how to live pleasing to God.
Jesus described how the Spirit of God would enable his apostles to teach us through their public preaching and inspired writing: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”-John 14:26. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,”-John 16:13.
It is not basketball about which God is concerned. “The truth” to which Jesus refers is not a vision of the perfect NCAA bracket! It is the perfection of the gospel. The love story of the cross would be unknown to man if all we had was our powers of observation. We can know the will of God for his children. It literally took an, “act of God” to deliver, not the knowledge of which 12-seeded team would upset one seeded fifth, but “the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”-Romans 12:2.
The odds of turning in the perfect bracket are, “one in nine-quintillion.” That is the number nine followed by 18-zeroes! If you are betting your knowledge of basketball will enable you to retire to a life of luxury, “Good luck!”
However, if you want to know who will and how we can be saved from our sins, God has not left us to twist in the wind. The apostle Peter puts it this way, “God has given us everything we need for life and godliness in this life and in the one to come.”-II Peter 1:3. You can win a million dollars if you turn in the perfect bracket. But that money will burn in the end and it all pales in comparison with the never-ending riches of living with God in his home, “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,”-II Corinthians 4:16.
Trying to pick every game correctly is practically impossible. Having faith in Jesus who died, God who raised, and the Spirit who aides will result in peace of mind on earth and joy, hope, and life in the world to come. No purchase necessary!
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