02-13-11 Hiding From God

We are studying the 8^th chapter of the book of Romans,

and our study has brought us to the final few verses of the chapter.

We ended two weeks ago

with Romans 8:28-30,

a passage in which Paul talks with us

about the character-rebuilding program

that our Lord has already predetermined

will be a central feature of His life with us

and His work in us.

He loves us too much

not to reconstruct our lives

into the pattern that frees us to be

all that He designed us to be

without the confining slavery

that sin always brings into our lives.

And we saw in that passage

that God has already predetermined

that every one of His children

will share in our own special program designed to conform us more and more

to the image of Jesus Christ.

We become more and more like our Lord.

In the course of that study two weeks ago

we bumped up against some words

that took up a lot of our time,

especially that word “predestined”.

I’ve thought a lot about that word,

and about why that word never ceases to trigger such strong responses within us.

And before we move on to verse 31

I think I’ll share just one additional thought

concerning this whole predestination thing.

We have talked often in the past

about the way in which

every one of us enters this world

with a heart-level mistrust

and antagonism toward God.

We are created beings

in rebellion against our Creator.

We really do believe

that we have both the right

and the ability to live our lives

independent from Him

and from His Lordship over us.

And because of this natural antagonism,

before we come to Christ,

we are drawn to any idea,

or belief,

or concept that seems to support our rebellion.

We like ideas

that make God appear irrational,

or cruel,

or illogical,

or unreasonable,

or just plain not nice to be around.

Such ideas feed our rebellion by confirming to our minds

that maintaining independence from this God

is the only reasonable, logical thing

any thinking person would ever do.

And so we look at “His morality”

and we tell ourselves

that those restrictive, archaic boundaries would only rob us of the “freedom” we need to really meet our needs.

We automatically dismiss anything “Biblical”

as being completely inconsistent

with the best scientific research available today.

We develop concepts of religion

in which “faith” and “reason”

must be rigidly segregated in our minds

so as to keep them from conflicting with one another.

Now, certainly, for those of us who turn to Christ,

the battle between us and God at the spirit level

is resolved forever.

He recreates within us

a new heart,

a heart that truly does long to please and honor Him.

But, even though the battle is over within our spirits,

the transition within our minds

has only begun.

The truth is,

having trained every reasoning process within us

to question,

and doubt,

and mistrust our Creator prior to our union with Him,

those flawed reasoning processes

continue to be the intellectual baseline

from which we initially begin

every reasoning process we enter into.

We Christians are such strange creatures.

We love our Lord deeply in our spirits,

but we are just not at all sure that we can altogether trust Him in our minds.

And this is especially true

when His battle on our behalf

to bring us into true freedom

causes Him to start removing and then rebuilding

some of those false foundations

upon which we have constructed our lives.

There are many times when

what we hear Him saying to us

frightens us,

or confuses us,

or unsettles us,

or forces us to face some issue

or some area of our lives

that we simply don’t want to face.

Loving God is one thing,

but trusting Him is something else altogether,

and something that often takes a great deal of effort.

Every growing Christian

will cycle through that churning process

repeatedly throughout our lives.

Now, I bring all of this up

because I think sometimes our minds look for hiding places from God,

places where we can give ourselves permission

to hide from the real issues going on inside us.

And one of the best places to hide from God

is behind a nice piece of “Bible Doctrine”

that allows us to avoid the real issues

God is seeking to address in our lives.

And I think sometimes this whole predestination confusion

plays into that same ongoing battle for practical trust in our God that is such a central part

of every growing Christian’s life.

Now, I need to be very careful here

with what I’m saying

so that I don’t give the wrong impression.

Asking honest questions about our God

is the healthiest thing we could ever do.

We all start out our lives

not knowing Him,

mistrusting Him,

believing He is the enemy.

We each inherit some sort of religious system from our childhood,

but even if that inherited system

is one based to some degree upon Biblical truth,

it is impossible for it to become ours personally

until we tear it apart and examine it closely

and decide for ourselves what we will claim as our own

and what we will not.

In any thinking adult

that process requires our asking a lot of questions,

and our having both the freedom and the courage to do so

without being attacked in the process.

If I am doing what I should be doing in my approach to teaching

along with the information I communicate to you,

I hope I also communicate something even more critical -

I hope I communicate to you

the freedom to think,

the freedom to ask questions,

and certainly the freedom to tell me if something I’ve said doesn’t make sense,

or if you flat-out reject it.

Not long ago I bumped into a man at the Post Office

who frequently joins us on Sunday mornings.

And in the conversation we shared together

there was one point where he said, “I don’t agree with some of the stuff you say.”

Now isn’t that great!

When he said that

it gave me the assurance that I was doing something right,

something that gave this friend of mine the freedom think,

and ask questions,

and see things differently.

You see, honest questions are always our friends,

and serve as valuable tools in our ongoing discovery of truth.

What does our God really say about this, or about that?

Why does He say what He says?

What does He mean by that?

But then how does that fit

with what He says over here?

And if this is true, then how can that be true too?

In true Christian thinking

there are no wrong questions,

nor are there any questions that cannot be asked.

And if your religious heritage has led you to believe otherwise,

it was not truly Christian.

That doesn’t mean, of course,

that we can always either quickly or easily find the answers we’re looking for.

There have been many times

when I have stared at things my God has said

and churned for days, or weeks, or months, or even years

over why He says what He says.

Many of those questions

will still be unanswered the day I die.

But asking them isn’t wrong

and I certainly don’t want my comments this morning

to give you the impression it is.

But I bring this whole thing up

because there is a fascinating mental questioning process

that we sometimes use

not so that we can find the truth,

but rather so that we can hide from it.

So this morning I’d like to offer you a little test

that may be helpful in recognizing

the difference between the two.

And before I give you the test,

let me just state again

that in my own experience

the times when we are most vulnerable

to looking for a hiding place

is when there is some issue in our lives

that we know God wants to address

and we simply don’t want to address it.

So what we typically do at those times

is to hide from the life issue

behind an intellectual question.

OK, here’s the test I’ll offer you

to help recognize when we’re doing that.

It has two parts to it.

First of all,

do I see myself suddenly allowing

the “answer” I have come up with

to this question

to negate or override

everything my God has already told me about Himself

through the Person of Jesus Christ?

Let me state it this way -

All correct understanding of God

begins with the Person of Jesus Christ.

I like the way the author of Hebrews says it:

HEB 1:1 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways,

HEB 1:2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.

HEB 1:3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature...

Jesus said it in a single sentence -

JOHN 14:9 He who has seen Me has seen the Father;

And when we see God in the person of Jesus

what do we see?

Well, right from the start,

we see that,

"...God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him.” (JOHN 3:17)

We see our Creator God

reaching out to us in absolute compassion,

and kindness,

and love,

entering our world,

and giving Himself to us in a form we could clearly understand,

not to condemn us,

not to judge us,

not to scream at us for our rebellion against Him,

but because He wanted to tell us He loves us,

and then demonstrate the depth of that love

by taking our sins onto Himself

and paying our debt in our place

so that we could be reunited with Him forever.

There is nothing vague,

or confusing,

or illusive

about the message God is giving us about Himself through Christ.

And this message

is the beginning of all correct understanding of God.

The Person,

and life,

and death,

and resurrection of Jesus Christ

is the foundation of all true doctrine about God.

And any truth we accept about God

must be consistent with that message,

the message that our God loves us with an everlasting love,

that He takes us without reservation exactly where we are,

and that He does everything within the boundaries of the true free will He has given us

to bring us into the freedom and health He wants us to know.

This is what is obvious about our Creator.

But if we find ourselves

suddenly setting aside all that is obvious

for the sake of what is obscure,

it may well be that what we are looking for

is not an answer

but rather an intellectual hiding place from our God.

Our bumping up against this concept of predestination

brought this whole thing into my mind.

There is no doubt that these concepts challenge our thinking -

predestination,

chosen,

foreknowledge...

But these, like every other truth communicated to us by our Lord,

only fit correctly into our thinking

within the context of the character and nature of God as clearly revealed to us

through His presentation of Himself through Christ.

You see,

here we are,

with the clear truth about our God screaming at us through the Person of Jesus Christ.

And if we bump up against

a doctrine like predestination

and then suddenly latch onto a concept of our Creator

in which we see Him creating people

whom He then arbitrarily predestines to go to hell,

what we may be doing

is looking not for understanding about our God,

but rather for a place to hide from Him.

Even though it hasn’t sounded like it this morning,

we are studying the 8^th chapter of the book of Romans.

And in the passage we are studying

Paul actually says in a single verse

the same thing it has taken me

the past half hour to try to say.

You see, immediately after talking with us

about the way in which our Lord

has predestined each Christian

to a character-building program

that will conform us increasingly to the image of Jesus Christ,

and then assuring us that,

“... whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified...”,

the very next thing he does

is to share with us how we will respond

and the conclusions we will reach

if we have correctly understood what he has been saying to us in these verses.

And what he says next

puts everything into the correct, logical context.

His next words are these:

ROM 8:31 What then shall we say to these things? ...

I love that!

This is my God telling me

what conclusions I will reach

if I have correctly understood

what He has just said to me.

And this is what He says:

ROM 8:31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

In other words,

if we have correctly understood what is being said,

not only will we not be pulled away from God,

but we will be overwhelmed with the most important single truth of our existence -

our God is FOR US.

Not only is He not the enemy,

but He is the greatest ally we will ever know,

the One who has been fighting for our freedom,

our health,

our redemption,

our love union with Him

since long before we were even born.

And then just so there is no misunderstanding about what He’s saying,

He goes on to complete the thought

by placing it in its proper context.

ROM 8:31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

ROM 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

And let me conclude by plugging that into the context of what we’ve been looking at this morning.

If we find ourselves in one of those churning places with our God,

if we have bumped up against something He has said

that frightens us,

or that creates within us

real questions about whether or not

this is the kind of God we want,

and if we have found ourselves

playing those mental games

in which we have been looking for “answers”

that make our God look illogical,

or unreasonable,

so that we can more easily dismiss what He has been saying to us,

let me assure you of the way things really are.

From the day of your creation,

and long before,

your God has been for you,

calling you to Himself,

preparing for you your own personal pathway into freedom.

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for you, how will He not also with Him freely give you all things?

What your spirit hungers for

you both can and will find in His love.

And just so that I don’t leave a dangling thought,

let me tack on the second evidence

of when we may be using doctrinal questions

to hide from God,

rather than to learn about Him.

The first evidence

is if we find ourselves

suddenly setting aside all that is obvious

for the sake of what is obscure.

The second evidence

is that, if we were to ask ourselves honestly,

“Have I been wrestling recently

with something I believe God has said,

or something I believe He is asking of me

that I really don’t like?”,

we would answer “Yes.”

You see, those are the times when we are most vulnerable

to seeking intellectual hiding places

that then give us “permission” to dismiss Him or His input from our lives.