03-16-14 All Your Needs Pt. 6

We were looking at some things last week

that we need to spend a little more time on.

Some of you were not here last week, of course,

and the rest of us have had

a lot of things

going on in our lives

since we were last together,

so we’ll ease our way back into where we were.

For a number of weeks, now,

we have been studying a single verse

found in the last part

of the last chapter of Philippians.

The verse is Philippians 4:19,

a passage in which Paul says, And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

In an attempt to bring ourselves

to the place where we can relate to this verse honestly

we have taken considerable time

looking at a number of the barriers we bring to this verse

that complicate our relationship to it.

Most of the barriers we’ve looked at

have dealt with the way in which our concept of what we really need

in order to live a fulfilled life

is all messed up.

We’ve talked about

the way in which we developed

our understanding of our needs

at a time when we were still fighting against our Creator,

and running from Him.

We’ve talked about the non-negotiables we’re clinging to,

all those things we believe

we absolutely must have

in order to be truly happy.

We’ve talked about all those things

we’re hanging onto

in order to bolster our self-identity,

things we think we need

in order to feel good about ourselves.

In other words,

most of the barriers we’ve talked about so far

have been concerned with

the distorted “needs list” we bring to God

when we come to Him.

But there is a second major problem area

in this whole business

of God’s commitment to meet our needs,

one that is potentially even more destructive to us

than our distorted concept of what our needs are.

We’ve talked about this second area

a little bit so far,

but I think it needs more of our time.

You see, on one side we have a deeply flawed concept of what we need,

but on the other side

we also have a deeply flawed concept

of the God we are bringing these needs to.

And then, to complicate things more,

last week,

when we finally began to actually study the verse itself,

the first, and by far the most important need I placed on our list

was our need for God Himself.

Actually, what I said was that the beginning of understanding

what God is saying when He says

“I will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus...”

is understanding that what we need most

is God Himself.

Now I believe God’s Spirit

enabled some of you to hear what I was trying to say

when I made that statement.

I think there were some of you

who were able to look

at all of the things you have been

frantically cramming into your lives

in an attempt to quiet the pain,

or hide from the fear,

or the loneliness,

or the emptiness,

and in a very personal way

you were able to hear God saying,

“My child, what you hunger for is ME.

The longing you feel

is the longing of a created being

in a desperate search for his or her Creator.

There is nothing else,

no one else who can fill that void.”

I think some of you heard that voice

and knew it was true.

But if that happened,

it was a very special work of the Spirit of God in your life,

and it happened in spite of the lies

all of us battle daily about our God.

Now look at this...

I said last week that the beginning of understanding

what God is saying when He says

“I will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus...”

is understanding that what we need most

is God Himself.

But the truth is

every one of us brings to that understanding

our own distorted perception

of who God is

and what He is going to do to us

and with us

if we really embrace Him

and give Him free reign in our lives.

I can go way back to the beginning

of my own little pilgrimage with God

and remember the sheer terror I felt

when I first realized God

was attempting to stake out a claim to my life.

I saw Him as a threat

to everything I needed most for true happiness.

He was there to rob me of my future,

to shape me into something I didn’t want to be,

to take away from me

things I knew I really needed.

I find that amazing!

What I needed more than anything else

for a deeply fulfilling and abundant life

was God Himself,

and yet what I feared more deeply than anything else

was the intrusion of God into my life.

And that battle was not limited to my first encounter with my God.

Every day I live

I find myself fighting the same battle

in different shapes and forms.

Every time I’m faced with the choice

of choosing submission,

or trust,

or obedience to God,

underlying those choices

is the same battle.

Can I really trust God’s intentions toward me?

Will I be pleased with whatever it is

He wants to do in my life?

I have been in a number of conversations throughout the years

in which people have shared honestly with me

about what they view as the non-negotiables in their own lives.

And with each of them

I could hear that same fear I know so well,

the fear of whether or not

what God wants for us

is what we really want for ourselves.

You see our problem, don’t you?

After three weeks of preparation,

last week I finally shared with us

the first thing that belongs

on every person’s list of needs.

That first thing is God Himself.

But that also happens to be

the one thing we are most afraid

to place on the list.

Now why is that?

What is it that makes all of us

so frantic to bolt and run

at the sight of our God?

Well, there are some obvious things

that would contribute to that response within us.

1. He is the One who offered us all of those THOU SHALT NOT’S.

2. And we are the ones who broke them all...

well, maybe not all of them,

but enough so that we feel real uncomfortable hanging out with Him.

3. He is also the Supreme Authority in all of creation,

and as such, in our minds He inherits

whatever negative experiences

we may have had with authorities in the past.

God ends up looking a lot like dad,

or maybe like that policeman who just pulled us over

for going 30 miles over the limit.

4. He is also the One

whom we are convinced wants to take away from us

some things we do NOT want to lose,

things we just know we must have for survival.

5. And then there is that submission thing -

for some strange reason

He clearly reserves for Himself

the right

and the authority to be GOD

in the lives of those who come to Him.

6. And then, of course, we have the constant,

sweet,

persuasive,

all-pervasive voice of the Enemy

telling us a thousand times a day

that this God cannot be trusted.

If He ever gets a hold of your life

He will cheat you,

and punish you,

and then force you to become

everything you least want to be.

I mean, look at the way He treated

some of His most faithful throughout history.

They...were tortured, ... and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment.

They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated...

Now, it’s true these were men of whom the world was not worthy,

but still they were wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground... (Heb. 11:35-38)

So what should we expect

if we also turn to Him in faith?

And then here I am,

your resident Bible Teacher,

suggesting that the one thing

that most belongs at the top of our needs list is God Himself.

We certainly want some of the things

we think He might be able to do for us,

but there are a lot of reasons why

we are a little skeptical

about whether or not we really want Him.

So what do we do with this?

Well, let me say first of all,

that the battles we fight in these areas

are the same battles

that every human on earth has fought

since the day Adam and Eve hid from their God in the Garden of Eden.

And then let me say

that God’s great solution

to our quiet terror of Him

is the center-piece of His entire revelation of Himself to us,

and, in fact, is stated clearly

in this same verse we are studying.

We haven’t focused on it together yet,

but I wonder if you noticed

the last phrase in Phil. 4:19.

Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

When God talks to us

about approaching Him with our needs

the first thing He does

is to turn our attention once again

to the Person of Jesus Christ.

And let me try to explain

what I see going on here.

God loves us.

He has loved us since the day He created us.

His love for us cries out to us

through everything He has said to us

and done for us.

As soon as sin entered into man’s relationship with God, however,

two huge problems

entered into our relationship with God,

problems that made it impossible

for us hear His voice of love.

#1. The sin itself walled us off from Him.

#2. Our own sense of shame

made us want to run and hide.

And there we were,

separated from God,

unable to hear His love for us,

terrified of His intrusion into our lives,

without hope,

and with no way of undoing our problem.

So what did God do?

How in the world

could He restore His friendship with us?

How could He rebuild our trust

in Him

and in His intentions toward us?

Do you know what He did?

He disguised Himself in a human body,

slipped into our world,

and lived with us as a man for 33 years

so that we could see just exactly

what our God is like

and how He feels about us.

Then, at the end of that 33 years

He offered His own death

as payment for our sins.

Now I want you to stay with me here

because there is something

I believe to be very important

that I want us to see.

When Jesus was here in the flesh

it took Him four years of living with His men 24 hours a day

before He could finally bring them to the place

where He could reveal to them

who He really was.

Just hours before His death,

in His final conversation with His disciples,

He said, John 14:7,9 “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him. Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, ...? He who has seen Me has seen the Father...”

Now, each of those 1^st century disciples

had to go through a crucial mental pilgrimage,

a pilgrimage that brought them to the point

where they could say,

“This Man Jesus is our God!”

But for each of us today

we must move through that pilgrimage in reverse.

If we are ever to relate to

or respond to our Creator correctly,

we must reach the place

where we understand that

Our God is this Man Jesus.

And let me explain what I mean.

I believe the center of Satan’s most effective attack on the human race

is to separate the person of Christ

from the image of God in our minds.

Let me ask you a question.

When you think about God,

and especially how He feels about you,

or how He responds to you in any given situation,

does your mind go immediately

to the Person of Christ

as we have Him revealed in the Gospels,

or does it go to your own mental image

of who you think GOD is?

Let me try again.

If our concept of God is correct,

we should see ourselves

responding to Him

exactly the same way as the disciples responded to Jesus.

But look at this -

in the Gospels we see Jesus’ disciples,

and in fact nearly the whole nation of Israel running to Jesus.

They packed themselves around Him,

pushing and shoving to get near Him,

until at times He couldn’t even eat,

and could hardly breath.

The only ones who ran away from Him

were the religious people,

the ones who were hiding behind

their external religious facades.

But today, in our world, it’s just the opposite.

Most of the world is running away from God,

and the ones who seem to be most comfortable running toward Him

are the religious legalists,

those who are waving their little lists

as proof of their piety.

So what is my point in all of this?

1. Jesus Christ and God the Father are absolutely identical in Their responses

to you and everything in your life.

2. It is impossible to correctly understand

the mind and heart of God

until we see it revealed through Christ.

3. When you find yourself pulling away from God,

ask yourself, “Would I respond the same way to the Jesus I see in the Gospels?”

If we see a difference

between our response to God

and our response to Jesus

then we know with certainty

that our concept of God

has been twisted and distorted

by a bunch of Satan’s lies.

There is a reason why almost half of the New Testament

is made up of four separate accounts

of the life of Jesus.

Both God and Satan know full well

that we each begin our relationship with God

filled with fear and distrust of our Creator.

Satan’s solution to that fear and distrust

is Religion.

Satan offers us neat little religious packages

in a wide variety of shapes and sizes,

each one offering

a list of duties we can perform

so that we can feel a little more acceptable to God.

But God’s solution to that fear and distrust

is to turn our eyes onto Jesus,

reminding us that this is our God,

this is the God we are afraid of,

this is the God we are having trouble trusting.

This is the God

who began His relationship with us

by removing our sin

through His own death for us,

and who now loves us,

and laughs with us,

and cries with us,

and understands us,

and delights in our friendship with Him

in just the same way

as Jesus delighted in His friendship

with Peter,

and Mary,

and Matthew,

and John.

Certainly there are some very difficult things to understand

about who God is

and why He does what He does.

But the beginning of all correct understanding of God

is knowing that God and Jesus are one and the same.