various
Saturday morning, as I was getting ready to leave for the bus trip to Ain Leuh, Franklin Elliot called me and told me about the news in Casablanca. I went online and made a quick scan of the report of the bombings and then left for the day.
I had seen the reporting of the bombings in Saudi Arabia and wondered if there would be a string of bombings in Arab countries, but I did not suspect that Morocco would be on the list. Having the bombings in Casa brings terrorism closer to home and we grieve for the families of the 41 people who died and the hundreds who are wounded.
This is not a safe world we live in and what is true is that this world has never been a safe place in which to live. Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
The world was not a safe place to live in the time of Jesus and it is not a safe place to live today and if Jesus does not return in the next 100 years, the world in the year 2103 will not be a safe place to live. This much we know about the future.
Some people were asking if we would have church this morning. Why not? If we did not meet this morning, when would it be a safer time to meet? It seems to me that this morning is safer than next week or the Sundays to follow will be. So we meet because the alternative is for the church to no longer meet and that is not an option for the church.
The sermon I had prepared for this morning is still the one I will preach. In light of the events in Casa Friday night, they are even more appropriate for us. So listen with your heart and mind to what I have prepared and draw strength from this sermon that will help you face the uncertain world in which we live.
Last week I introduced a new series of sermons on intimacy with God. I talked about a number of ways we can look at intimacy with God but there is only one way of looking at our relationship with God that is appropriate at the beginning. And that is that an intimate relationship with God is possible only because God desires an intimate relationship with us.
If God did not first want an intimate relationship with us, our attempts to have an intimate relationship with him would be futile, a waste of time and energy.
The summer before I married Annie, I worked on a automobile assembly line. For part of the summer I lifted bumper parts and for part of the summer I put on the right front panel of cars. I did not build the whole automobile, but for arguments sake, let’s say that that summer I created cars. A year later I married Annie and nine months later, Elizabeth was born. Two years later, Caitlin was born. Again, for argument’s sake, let’s say that I created my daughters.
I created cars and then I created daughters. And yet I feel very differently about the cars I created than I do about the daughters I created. I don’t know where any of the cars I created are today. I never visited them. I’ve never really thought much about them. And yet I have expended a great amount of care and concern on my daughters. Next week Elizabeth is going to visit us and I am delighted.
When God created, did he create on the assembly line or did he create as a parent? Does God care about his creation as a parent does for his children or is he as indifferent to his creation as an assembly line worker making cars or tools or radios?
Assuming that God cares for his creation, does he feel the same way about all of his creation? Does he feel the same way about moss and ferns, sheep and dogs, flies and mosquitoes as he does about men and women?
Scripture is clear that God has a concern for humans that he does not have for any other part of his creation. Humans stand above all creation in God’s eyes. In Genesis, in the creation story, God pronounces his benediction on his creation after each day. He proclaims that what he made that day is good. But then after he creates mankind, he pronounces that it is very good.
Alone of all God’s creation, men and women have been created in God’s image and because of this, God cares for humans in a way he does not care for the rest of creation.
When Jesus grieved for the destruction of Jerusalem, he did not grieve for the plants that would be trampled and burned. He did not grieve for the animals that would be destroyed. He grieved for the humans who would suffer. Mankind has a special relationship with God among all creation.
And alone of God’s creation, it is with men and women that God wants to have an intimate relationship. God desires that we know he exists and that we experience his leading, empowering and presence.
Can this be true? Is this just wishful thinking? Is this just man’s invention?
Let me present this morning three proofs that this is not just wishful thinking or man’s invention. Three proofs that God desires an intimate relationship with us.
Let’s look first at Abraham. In Genesis 12, we read the first recorded encounter Abram had with God. This is the beginning, where it all started for Israel and the church of Christ that would be built on Israel’s faith.
The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
Notice a few things about this call of God to Abram. It began with the Lord coming to Abram. It did not begin with Abram sitting down under a tree in the shade in a philosophical mood and creating a new idea. It began with God coming to Abram and speaking to him, calling him to a new land to be the father of a new nation.
The first thing to know about God is that it is always God who initiates with us. God is the one who comes to us. God approaches us. This was the case with Abram. It was the case with Moses when God came to him in the burning bush. It was the case when God called Jeremiah and Isaiah. It was always the case and always will be the case.
How do we know that God wants to have an intimate relationship with us? We know because God approaches us. God first reaches out to us before we respond to him.
Notice too what it is God is to do in this calling and what it is that Abram is to do in this calling. Abram has one responsibility. He is to leave. He simply needs to obey and leave as God told him to do. Admittedly, this was not an easy thing for him to do. He was already an adult with established relationships. He was living in a highly civilized (for that time) city and was being asked to go to an underdeveloped land. But Abram’s responsibility, his list of “things to do” has just one item. Leave.
Look at what is on God’s “to do” list. I will show you the land. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse those who curse you.
Abram’s part is to obey and it is God who promises to do all the work to make his promise come true. This was true for Abraham and true for Moses and true for all who have ever been in a relationship with God. It is God who initiates. It is God who leads and directs and works to fulfill his promises.
We have a part to play and it is not insignificant, but an intimate relationship with God is possible because God desires to have an intimate relationship with us and God works to make it so.
How do I know God wants to have an intimate relationship with me? I know because it is God who initiated a relationship with me and it is God who has worked in my life to draw me closer to him.
Is what I am saying true? Perhaps you are not convinced with the cards I have played thus far. Let me now play my two trump cards. Let me offer the most powerful proof that God desires an intimate relationship with us.
The first trump card, proof that what I am saying is true, is that God sent Jesus to this world. Jesus was born, God in the flesh, Immanuel, in Bethlehem to Joseph and Mary. He grew up in Palestine. At the age of thirty he began his public ministry and after three years, he was crucified.
Think about it. Why did God have to send Jesus to live as a human and then be beaten, mocked and crucified? Why would God want to suffer like this?
Who came up with this plan? Did some particularly clever men and women sit down and develop this plan at a conference?
In fact there are many examples in the world of men and women who have sat down and tried to figure out how to bridge the gap between mankind and the creator of all we see. The world is filled with religious systems that have sought ways for men and women to work their way to God.
Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Mormons all recognize that there is a problem. We are distanced from God, however God is defined. Hindus and Buddhists want to become part of the consciousness of God. Muslims and Jews and Christians want to be in heaven with God. Mormons want to be God of another planet, but that is another story. But all world religions want in some way to have intimacy with God and religions have been developed that help us to work our way to intimacy with God. The eightfold path of Buddhism, generating more good karma than bad and being reincarnated in a higher life form in Hinduism, following the five pillars of Islam.
What makes Christianity unique among all world religions is that it is based on what God has done for us. We did not initiate intimacy with God. God initiated intimacy with us. God did all the work. It was God who sent Jesus to be Immanuel, God in the flesh. It was God in the flesh who suffered and died on the cross. In the words of an early church hymn:
Jesus Christ, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Why would God suffer in this way unless it was because he wanted to have an intimate relationship with us? Why would God suffer in this way unless he loved us with a love beyond our comprehension?
How do you know that I want something? In 1996 I ran the Boston Marathon. How do you know that I wanted to finish that race? How do you know how intensely I wanted to run and complete that race? In the three months preceding the race, I ran 395 miles or 632 kilometers. I chose to run in good weather and bad. I choose to run in snow storms and rain. I choose to run even when some part of my body was in pain. I choose to run when I was sick with head colds. That’s how you know I wanted to have the satisfaction of crossing the finish line. I was willing to suffer to get what I wanted.
How do you know God wants to have an intimate relationship with us? We know because we see how Christ had to suffer to bring us to a relationship with God.
God wants an intimate relationship with you and has demonstrated that by sending his son to die for you. God has humiliated himself, submitted himself, subjected himself to the limitations of living within the confines of space and time in this material world. God has allowed himself to be beaten and mocked and taken to the cross to be crucified for this one purpose: God wants to have an intimate relationship with you.
How do we know that God wants to have an intimate relationship with us? God sent Jesus. But I told you I had two trump cards to play. There is another equally powerful proof that God desires to be in an intimate relationship with himself.
When Jesus was about to leave this material world, he promised to his disciples and to all who would follow him through the ages that he would send the Holy Spirit.
Why did God need to send the Holy Spirit? With the work of Jesus, our salvation was accomplished. Jesus died so we could live. We accept God’s gift of salvation and we have the promise that after we die our physical death, we will rise to new life with him in heaven. So why the Holy Spirit?
Isn’t this even further proof that God wants to have an intimate relationship with us that after Jesus ascended, the Spirit was sent to be God present with us.
How would we know about Jesus if it were not for the Holy Spirit?
Paul wrote in his first letter to the church in Corinth
I Corinthians 2
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Without the Spirit, we would not be able to appreciate the truth of what God has done for us in Jesus. When Jesus left this earth, he sent the Spirit because it is only with the Spirit that we can have an intimate relationship with God. Apart from the Holy Spirit, there is no intimacy with God.
Jesus died for us and rose from the dead to give us hope that when we die our physical death, we too will be raised to new life, eternal life. But if the Holy Spirit had not been sent, we would not be talking about this marvelous truth this morning. We would most probably not know anything about it. It is the Holy Spirit that helps us to see what God has done for us through Jesus Christ.
Do you see what God has done, throughout mankind’s history? Starting with Abram, he has taken the initiative. God appeared to Abram and called him to be father of a great nation. God appeared to Moses to lead Israel out of captivity. God led Moses to Mt. Sinai to receive the Law.
God sent Jesus to be born as a baby and to be the Savior of the world. And God sent the Holy Spirit to guide us, instruct us, comfort us, strengthen us. I am not talking here about a religious system to which you need to submit. I am talking about God who has continually taken the imitative to have an intimate relationship with you and with me.
God took the initiative to send Jesus to be our Savior. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Paul wrote to the church in Rome. And God did the work required. Christ was beaten and mocked and crucified. Christ was raised from the dead in a triumphal victory over the powers of death.
God took the initiative and sent the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his disciples before he ascended into heaven:
“Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
And it is the Holy Spirit who works unceasingly in us to mold us and shape us and draw us ever closer to the intimate relationship with God that God desires to have with us.
God always takes the initiative and God does the hard work but there is something you must do if you want to have an intimate relationship with God. The first is to open your heart and receive from God his gift of salvation. Accept Jesus as Savior and Lord of your life.
Francis Thompson wrote a famous poem in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Hound of Heaven is the title of the poem and it describes one man’s resistance to God and God’s never ending pursuit of him until he concedes and accepts the gift of salvation.
I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
You may have been fleeing from God all your life. You may have been ignoring God’s efforts to draw you to him. But this morning you can concede the battle. You can stop fleeing. You can stop resisting. This morning you can stop, turn around and face the one who has been pursuing you, the hound of heaven. You can stop and say yes to God who has been, is and always will be pursuing you because he loves you and wants you to share in his love.
I want to give you the opportunity to do that this morning. At the end of the sermon, you will have the opportunity to come forward and pray with some people who will be standing at the front of the church. This morning you can take the first step toward having an intimate relationship with God who desires to have that intimate relationship with you.
The second step you need to take to have an intimate relationship with God is to open yourself to the work of the Holy Spirit. You may have opened yourself to accept God’s gift of salvation. You may have done this years ago. But are you truly open to the Holy Spirit, God present with you? Have you set up barriers to keep parts of your life from God? Have you settled on a theology that restricts what God can do in you? Have you set up emotional barriers to protect yourself but which also prevent God from working in you as he wants to do?
To ignore the Holy Spirit, to close ourselves off from the Holy Spirit, in fact to not seek the Holy Spirit in our lives is to cut ourselves off from the intimacy with God that God wants to have with us.
Make this morning the time when you will concede in your struggle to maintain control. Open yourself to the Holy Spirit and stop resisting him. Stop resisting him and pray that his power will fill your life. Invite the Holy Spirit into your life without restriction.
Are you ready this morning to stop running from God and turn and accept the love he wants to pour into your life? Then come forward to pray with people who will be up front to pray with you.
Are you ready this morning to push aside your theological barriers, your emotional barriers and open yourself to the Holy Spirit who has been sent so you can have an intimate relationship with God? Then come forward to pray with people who will be here to pray with you.
Don’t be embarrassed. Don’t be ashamed. Christians are not perfect people. Christians are grateful people because God has shown them where to find food. Don’t let pride keep you from coming forward to pray. This is not a time for some to say, “See, what did I tell you. I was right.” This is a time for all of us to rejoice in what God has offered us. This is a time to rejoice that God wants to be in an intimate relationship with us.
So come forward for prayer. I will be the first to come because I need help to find healing that will allow me to let down the emotional barriers that prevent the Holy Spirit from working in my heart. I do not worry what you will think of me for coming to ask for prayer.
So come. Give your life to Christ. Accept his gift of salvation. Open yourself this morning to what God wants to do in you. Open yourself to the Holy Spirit.
Come.
