©2005 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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03-06-05 |
The Bottom Line |
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3/6/05 The Bottom Line
When Paul begins his description
of the approach to life that will reflect the truth
about who we really are as Christians,
the first thing he gives us
is a clear call to unity within the family of God.
It is not a structural unity,
not an organizational unity,
but rather a true unity of spirit
that grows out of all of those things
that we share together as Christians,
the things that cut across all cultures,
all denominational lines,
all doctrinal differences.
He puts it like this -
EPH 4:2-6 ...with all humility and gentleness, with
patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit,
just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in
all.
We spent most of our time last week
looking at what Paul was saying
when He told us that there is one body and one faith.
We saw that he was not giving us a goal we should pursue,
but rather an absolute statement of fact.
No mater how many distinct structural groups or organizations
may cluster under the Christian banner world-wide,
there is only one body of Christ on this earth,
made up of all those who have reached out to God
and accepted the forgiveness and salvation He has offered us through Christ.
I was asked an excellent question following our time together last week.
I was asked what I consider to be the minimum requirements for true faith.
What are the absolute basics that a person must accept
in order for them to receive entrance into the family of God.
The only one who can really answer that question is God Himself,
but of course I offered my opinion.
When my friend asked the question last week
the first response I offered
was that the three essentials for true saving faith
were, first, recognition of Christ as being God in human form,
second, the understanding that when He died on the cross He was choosing to offer Himself as full payment for our sins in our place,
and third, our choosing to trust His death as payment for our sins personally.
And for all of us who have heard the message of Christ,
I would stay with that definition of saving faith.
But there is a statement made by the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 11:6
that makes me think
that even those basics I’ve just stated
may go beyond what God requires from us for entrance into His family.
Of course I do understand
that natural desire within us
to somehow take what our God has said to us
and restructure it into an absolute and certain formula
that, if followed, will guarantee that a person will be reunited with his or her God forever.
If you were to come up to me this morning following the service
and say to me,
“Larry, I don’t think I’m a Christian,
but I want to be.
I hear you talking about this God who is truly good,
this God who can and will recreate me from the inside out
if only I will turn to Him and place my life into His hands.
I want that.
What do I do?”
If you were to say that to me
I would respond by saying something like this.
All God requires from us
for entrance into His family
is our recognition that we need Him as our Savior,
and our willingness to believe Him when He tells us
that the death of Christ really was total payment for all of our sins.
If you want entrance into His family,
I would encourage you to pray this prayer.
“Lord, I do want to become your child.
I know I have sinned against You.
I thank You for loving me enough
to die in my place for my sins.
I now place my life into Your hands,
and ask that you place your Holy Spirit within me
and rebuild my life from the inside out. Amen”
And in that response to you
I would be giving you my clearest,
simplest statement of what I understand to be
that first step we take into the family of God.
But even as I say that
I know that it is not really the prayer itself
that has the power to reunite us with our God,
it is something else altogether,
something that must take place within us
at the deepest level of our being.
And until that takes place
all the prayers in the world will not bring about our salvation,
and when it takes place
the prayer itself is simply our putting into audible words
what has already taken place within us at the spirit level.
Back in 1968,
for eight weeks of the summer between my Jr. and Sr. years in college
I was part of an evangelistic team on the Carribean Island of Trinidad.
During that summer
for eight hours a day, five days a week
I went from door to door with a little suitcase full of tracts,
witnessing to people
and encouraging them to turn their lives over to Christ.
During that summer I prayed with dozens of people,
each of them repeating a prayer very similar to the one I just shared with you.
But looking back,
I believe now that very few of those I prayed with
actually made their entrance into the family of God
as a result of that prayer I prayed with them.
I think many of them
did what they did
simply because they didn’t want to offend
this nice American college student who came to their door.
But there were at least a few
who were indeed transformed in spirit,
recreated by God in a way that altered their lives forever.
I remember one teenage boy named Indar Singh.
Following our brief contact that summer,
he and I exchanged letters and even phone calls for years,
and always there was this hunger for growth evident within him.
So what makes the difference?
That’s what brought that statement from Hebrews to mind.
It’s found in the 11th chapter,
a chapter that contains God’s historical hall of fame,
a list of some of the greats throughout Old Testament history
who displayed a true faith response to God.
And what he says makes me think
that what God is seeking from us,
and what He responds to within us
is far less complicated than even that simple prayer I shared with you a few minutes ago.
The verse says this -
HEB 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please
Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder
of those who seek Him.
OK, the first part of that statement
gives us one of the most basic ground-rules in all of our dealings with our Creator.
And it is a fascinating ground-rule,
one that plays havoc with most of what we see being done
in the whole world of man-made religious systems.
It says that it is not our performance that God is concerned with,
it is the underlying motivation behind that performance.
Deeply imbedded in the human religious nature
is the hope,
the belief that there are things we can do
that, in themselves, will please or impress our Creator.
If I ... then God will be pleased.
If I what?
If I go to church today...
if I give money to help the tsunami victims...
if I stop smoking...
if I stop drinking...
if I report that income on my tax return even though the IRS doesn’t know about it...
if I just do this or do that
then God will be pleased with me.
And all such thinking
is rooted in the belief
that God’s point of focus in our lives,
His primary concern is on our actions,
and if our actions are good by His standard
then it brings Him pleasure
and brings us His approval.
And these are the games we play with God.
But then we come across a statement like this one.
And without faith it is impossible to please Him...
Unless what we are doing
is motivated by faith,
it cannot,
it will not please God.
In fact, it gets even worse.
Not only does it not please Him,
but Paul tells us in Romans 14:23 that “...whatever is not from faith is sin.”
Which makes it all the more important
that we understand what this “faith” thing is
that God is seeking from us.
And that’s where the second half of this verse in Hebrews
has helped me so much,
because in that second half
he tells us exactly what faith is
and at the same time tells us
what it is that God is seeking from us,
what it is that unites us with Him initially,
and what it is that pleases Him
whenever He sees it in our relationship with Him from then on.
And what is it he says?
“...for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
OK, now let me see if I can explain
what I see happening in this amazing statement.
This is our God telling us
what it is He has been seeking from us, His creation, from the very beginning.
This IS what He wants from us.
This is at the center,
at the very core of everything He has ever said to us,
everything He seeks from us,
everything His Spirit is attempting to accomplish with each of our lives.
This is what He was asking from Adam and Eve,
what they refused to give Him.
It is what none of us bring with us
when we enter this world,
but what He asks from each human being when we are on this earth,
and when He sees it,
it is what brings about that ultimate transition in our lives in which,
well, as Paul put it in his letter to the Colossians,
... He then rescues us from the domain of
darkness, and transfers us to the kingdom of His beloved Son...
And what is it?
It is first of all our recognition that He is there - the Creator God of all that is.
It isn’t that we lack evidence, of course.
Even without the person of Jesus Christ,
and all that He communicated to us about Himself as our God,
every aspect of the entire physical world,
and every aspect of our own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual being
screams out His existence.
But that isn’t the pivotal point.
And it certainly isn’t where Adam and Eve went wrong.
They had no question about the existence of God.
He was right there in front of them.
But it is the second half of that faith equation
that brings about the turning point.
“...for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
Do you know what he’s saying there?
He is telling us
that true faith is our reaching the point where we choose to believe
that God is good.
Not just good in the sense of being righteous, or absolutely moral, or just in His dealings with us,
but truly good to us personally,
in every way.
It is our choosing to believe
that He is in every way what we hunger for most,
that He both can and will fulfill the deepest longings within us,
that if we see correctly what it is we truly long for more than anything else,
more than everything else,
we would see that what we really want is Him,
and everything He chooses to give us.
Those of you who have listened to my preaching during the past few years
probably know already
that I have come to realize
that the greatest gifts my God will ever give me (apart from the gift of His Son)
are the people He has given me to love.
And you also know
that one of the things I most enjoy
is being involved in the lives of young people.
I could never do what I see Gary and Jill doing
because I lack both the organization skills
and the remarkable energy level it requires.
But I do love getting involved in the lives of a few kids at a time,
on a one-to-one basis.
And when I do,
most of all what I offer them is my friendship,
and my love.
We don’t call it that, of course,
but they know it.
A number of months ago,
way back when the days were long,
and the sun was warm,
and the trees were still clothed in that beautiful early summer green,
I took one of my treasures on an outing to an isolated lake
for a hot-dog roast,
and some target practice with my .22.
The father of the kid I was with
totally bailed out of his son’s life many years ago,
and in some respects I know I’ve been able to fill the void left behind.
The afternoon developed into the most perfect father/son type outing you could ever hope for.
We found some old beer bottles along the shore,
pitched them out into the lake as far as we could,
and then took more rounds than I’ll tell you
trying to hit them and sink them.
And at one point in our antics
I looked at this kid
and saw in his eyes an excitement and adolescent joy that just thrilled me.
I knew that it wasn’t just the sunshine,
or the picnic,
or the target practice,
but that most of all it was what was happening between the two of us.
And, on impulse,
all of the sudden I took the rifle,
set it down,
reached out and put my hands on his shoulders so that he was facing me,
and then said, “I am going to tell you something right now
that you will not understand for a number of years.
But when you finally do,
it will change your life forever.”
As soon as I said that,
I could see that I had his attention.
Then I said,
“God feels exactly the same way about you that I do, only a thousand times more.”
Then I picked up the .22
and we went back to our shooting.
Folks, it is our spirit’s discovery
and then our mind’s acknowledgement of that truth about God’s relationship with us
that forms the center of all true faith.
That is what our God is seeking
in this whole creative experiment of His.
It is not just that we will all be
nice little created beings
who obey Him
and worship Him as our Creator.
It is that, because of all that has happened between us and Him,
we will be able to look into His heart,
into the very heart of God,
and see there, well as Paul put it in this letter we’re studying,
that we may be able to comprehend ... what is the breadth
and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses
knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
He wants us to know,
and then to choose to believe over and over again,
that He is
always, only, eternally a rewarder of those who seek Him,
that His every action toward us
has always been motivated by His love for us,
and that whenever we reach out to Him as God, on His terms,
the response we will receive from Him
is the response our spirits truly hunger for the most.
This, of course, is where Adam and Eve missed the whole thing.
Their great failure,
their great sin was not their act of disobedience.
The disobedience was simply the natural consequence
of the real evil in their life -
they chose not to trust the heart of their God,
they chose not to trust His love,
they chose to doubt that His intentions toward them were in every way good.
That is what brought condemnation and separation from God into the human race.
And all God requires from us
in order to reverse that separation
and remove that condemnation from us forever
is that we choose to do
what Adam failed to do - to trust God’s heart intentions toward us,
to trust His love personally,
and to choose to believe
that whenever we reach out to Him as our God on His terms
He will respond to us in kindness and compassion.
Now I got into this whole thing
because I was asked what I believe to be the absolute basics
in a true, faith response to God.
And in response to that
I would say that the real starting place for us
is that point at which we reach out to our Creator
and say to Him at the spirit level,
“I choose to believe that You really are there,
that You really are my Creator God who has the absolute right to be God in my life,
and I now choose to place my life into Your hands,
believing that if I do
You will respond to me by pouring out Your lovingkindness on me.”
Now, most of the time,
the way through which we are best able to first hear that truth
and then to respond to it
is through the correct presentation of the message of Jesus Christ.
JOH 3:16-17 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
But even there,
the heart of all true saving faith
is not just the acceptance of Christ,
but the acceptance of the truth about the real nature of God’s heart intention toward us
as we have seen it displayed through what Christ has done.
And then, just one additional thought here.
True faith,
that is, our choosing to believe that God is there and that He is always, absolutely good to all who come to Him,
is not a point we reach,
but rather a life-long process we enter into as Christians.
It starts with our acceptance of that truth
as we respond to it in the offer of salvation being made to through Christ.
But from that point on,
we then enter into a life-long rethinking and reworking of every aspect of our lives
and every new event that enters our lives
in the light of this same basic truth.
Every time we face a moral question in any aspect of our lives
the same basic faith issue comes into play.
Will I choose to trust the heart of my God toward me
in what He has said?
Does He really understand my needs?
Will He, can He really meet my deepest needs
if I obey what He has said to me in the areas of moral right and wrong?
We fight the same battles
in the priorities we choose for our lives every day,
in the perspective we have on the future and our security for the future,
in the ways we choose to relate to those around us,
and on and on.
The truth is,
with every event in our lives,
each day we live
we once again face the same basic question -
is God really here, with us, in this,
and if I listen to what He’s saying
can I, will I trust Him to work it out in a way that is truly good for me?
Several weeks ago my dad had a significant stroke
that has resulted in my parents now having to make major changes in their lives.
Right now my dad is in a nursing care facility in Seattle
that is at best a very difficult place for him to be.
He is having to learn how to talk all over again,
and how to regain some level of physical mobility.
I talked with him on the phone this past week
and in that conversation he said,
“I am so thankful for what I have.”
Folks, that’s faith.
That is my dad looking at what is, from a human point of view,
a hideous situation
and then choosing to believe once again
that his God is right there with him,
and that, in this too, he will find His Lord being good to him,
upholding his spirit,
and giving him the strength for what may be the most difficult time of his life.
HEB 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.