05-01-11 So Why Don’t We Trust?

We are studying the 10^th chapter of the book of Romans.

But I hope we are doing more than just that.

I hope very much

that we are also in the process

of discovering some things about our God,

and about the way He relates to us,

things we may never have seen before.

40 years ago I understood so much about God.

Well, more accurately,

40 years ago I thought I understood so much.

I knew lots and lots of answers

to lots and lots of questions,

and I’d even built a bit of a reputation as a young Bible scholar.

There was nothing wrong with knowing those answers.

There was nothing wrong with the answers I knew.

My real problem 40 years ago

was that I really believed

knowing the answers was the goal.

I believed that the accumulation of knowledge

was what it was all about.

I believed that the more knowledge I accumulated,

the more qualified I became

both to teach,

and to live the Christian life.

But things have changed for me in recent years.

I still accumulate knowledge,

I still try to communicate it to others when it seems appropriate.

But the goal is all different than it use to be.

The Apostle Paul put it into words perfectly in Philippians chapter 3 when he said,

PHI 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ,

PHI 3:9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,

PHI 3:10 that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

That I may know Him...

that I may gain Him...

It isn’t about knowing things,

it’s all about knowing Him.

I mention this as we move back into Romans chapter 10 again this morning

because I have been seeing things in this passage

that I have not seen before,

things about our God,

things that amaze me.

If you were able to join us two weeks ago

you know what we saw in those first 11 verses of Romans chapter 10.

We saw there

what we called “Where Trust Begins”.

We saw our God,

the all-powerful,

eternal Being who created us,

extending to each of us an invitation to choose to trust Him.

We saw Paul begin and end the section we looked at two weeks ago

with exactly the same words:

ROM 9:33, 10:11... "Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed."

I think I mentioned it two weeks ago,

but I really must say again

that I find statements like that

to be among the most amazing

and remarkable statements in all of God’s communication to us.

This is our God,

the One who brought all that is into existence,

in effect marketing Himself to us.

We didn’t have time to look at it two weeks ago,

but this same message continues in the next two verses of Romans 10.

ROM 10:12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him;

ROM 10:13 for "Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved."

He assures us that this invitation He is extending to the human race

is in no way exclusive,

or limited to a select few.

It is open to all.

...for the same Lord is Lord of all...

And then comes yet another remarkable communication to us from our Creator.

He describes Himself as, “abounding in riches for all who call upon Him...”

I would like you to take that statement

and put it next to your own concept of God.

Some of you here this morning

are not even sure God cares about you personally,

and, no matter what the song says,

you’re really not even sure He does know your name.

Some of you are certain He knows your name,

and the reason He knows it

is because He’s really ticked at you.

You’ve messed up some major parts of your life...

you know it,

you’re certain He knows it,

and the best you can hope for

is to keep up this little game of hide-and-seek you’ve been playing with Him

with the hope that you can stay out of His way.

And some of you,

when you think about God and His interaction with you,

are convinced that

at the top of His priority list for you

is the need to shape you up,

to make some very needed changes in your life.

But I wonder how many of us

begin our thoughts about Him

by seeing Him as abounding in riches for all who call upon Him.

Interesting choice of words, huh?

He doesn’t just say He’s willing to be nice to us.

He doesn’t just say He’s open to forgiving us.

He describes Himself as “abounding in riches...”!

And the Greek word used for that phrase “abounding in riches”

means just what it says.

It means to have great wealth,

to become rich.

God promises to share great wealth

with all who come to Him.

Now, the next verse does give us some insight

into the nature of this wealth.

He says, for "Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved."

He is talking about God delivering us

from all those things that have the power to destroy us

beginning, of course, with our sinfulness.

But before we move into that,

I want to be sure we hear what is really being said in these verses.

As we saw the last time we were in this passage,

this whole section of Romans

presents to us a clear, powerful affirmation of the free will

given to us by our Creator.

And remarkably, it is given to us

with the understanding

that all of us who are reading these words

have already used that free will

to rebel against our Creator,

to reject Him as the center of our universe,

and to place ourselves in that place instead.

This is our default setting in life.

This is the spirit condition we bring with us into this world.

And yet, in the context of that kind of blatant abuse of our free will,

His clear, unqualified message to each of us is this:

“I want you to know, My Creation,

that I still long to pour out My great riches upon you.

I promise you that if you choose to believe in Me,

you will never, ever be disappointed.

And all you have to do

is to call upon Me as your God.”

Doesn’t that cause you to stand in amazement

at what kind of God this is?

Why would He do that?

Why wouldn’t He just wipe us all out,

or let us stew in our own self-created misery?

The only answer He ever gives us to those questions

doesn’t make any sense to us

even after we hear it.

JOH 3:16 "For God so loved the world...”

Now, before we go any farther with this,

I want us to return to a question

that I think just naturally grows out of this truth.

If the nature of God and His offer to us

really is as Paul describes it here

why in the world don’t we all just naturally respond to God’s offer?

Why don’t we just naturally turn to Him in trust?

Why is it so incredibly hard

for us to do

what would logically seem to be the most natural thing in the world,

to trust the God who created us,

especially when He then turns to us

and assures us that He is “abounding in riches for all who call upon Him...”?

Why is it that, in practical truth,

we have to fight and claw and churn our way back into some small level of trust

in our relationship with this God who powerfully proclaims His love for us

and His longing to pour out His kindness upon us?

OK, part of the reason trust is so hard for us

is because we know that with it comes the submission thing,

and the acceptance of some limitations

upon this precious free will of ours.

I understand this just like you do.

I stand up here this morning

and confidently assure you

that God is “abounding in riches for all who call upon Him...”,

but I also live with vivid awareness

of my own past and present battles with this good God.

My entrance into His family began with such a battle.

I remember agonizing over the tremendous sense of potential loss I felt

when I first thought this God

might want to claim leadership of my life.

There was no sense of calm assurance

that His intentions toward me

were filled with warmth and kindness.

At the time He gave me not even a glimpse

of the riches He has since poured out on me

during the past 45 years.

All I knew at the time was that He was only offering me one kind of relationship -

one in which I allowed Him to be God.

And the truth is,

what little I saw of His intentions for me

made me certain He was going to mess up everything.

You see, dealing with God in the abstract,

and dealing with Him on a personal level

are two very different things.

And it has been both my experience,

and my observation

that true belief in God

cannot happen without Him using some specific issue as the catalyst.

With me, in those early days,

it was this whole preacher thing.

From my point of view, it was just an altogether lousy idea.

Sometimes the catalyst is a moral issue we’re wrestling with,

some area in our life

where He shows us that we are trying to meet our needs

outside of the moral framework He has established for us,

and at that point “belief in Him” involves our willingness to let go of our way,

and trust Him to show us how to meet our needs His way.

I remember many years ago

I spoke at a youth rally in Washington state,

and following the meeting

I was asked to talk with a young lady who was clearly in tremendous turmoil in her young Christian life.

I asked her what the problem was

and she said she had no Christian friends and she had prayed and prayed

that God would give her a Christian friend,

but there was no one.

I talked with her for several minutes,

and then I asked her a question

that made her turn pale.

I said, “Do you have a boyfriend?”

She looked down at the floor and said, “Yes.”

Then I said, “Is he a Christian?”

“No.”

I knew God had a great wealth of friendships in store for that young lady,

relationship riches He longed to pour out for her.

But I also believe that her entrance into trust at that point in her life

involved the very practical step

of letting go of a relationship

that she knew was not what God had for her.

Was her God abounding in riches for her?

Absolutely.

Did her step of trust at that point in her life

look anything like riches to her?

No!

And when we wonder why we don’t

just automatically lunge out in trust

to this great God of ours,

at the top of the “reason why” list

is often the “catalyst factor” -

the issue He has placed before us

that helps us to understand

the true nature of trust.

But, as I thought about this question this past week

there were several other blocks to trust that came to mind as well.

2. I think we sometimes have trouble

seeing our God as abounding in riches for all who call upon Him...

when we look at the world around us.

We sit in stunned, horrified silence

as we watch in vivid detail

the compounded consequences of a massive earthquake in Japan.

We see literally the entire world

continuing to deal with a massive global financial meltdown

that has generated tremendous fear and hardship and uncertainty

with no certain answers on the horizon.

We wrestle, sometimes daily,

with the chronic consequences of the evil

that has touched our lives personally

and it makes us angry,

or frightened,

or filled with pain,

and we wonder how to put it together

with a God...abounding in riches for all who call upon Him...

And it can make our trust response in this God

more difficult for us.

I want to share a remarkable quotation with you

found in the Gospel of Luke 4:6.

It is a rare quotation from Satan himself.

Most of what we have in the Bible

are the words of God

spoken either directly or indirectly to us.

But in this verse

we are permitted to eavesdrop

on a conversation between Satan

and Jesus.

Satan is trying to offer Jesus an alternative to the cross,

a way to reclaim the world

without His suffering for our sins.

And at one point in that conversation Luke records this:

LUK 4:5 And (Satan) led (Jesus) up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

LUK 4:6 And the devil said to Him, "I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.

LUK 4:7 "Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours."

Now I know we love to sing, “This is my Father’s world...”,

but the truth is, it is not.

It is the kingdom of Satan,

and if we don’t like something we see going on here

we need to give blame where blame is due.

What good exists in this world right now,

what morality and beauty still exist

do so only because of the redemptive work of the Spirit of God

in the lives of His people,

and because the imprint of the Creator

still remains at some level within His creation.

But if the evil that saturates the world in which we live

causes you to question the goodness of our God,

you’re blaming the wrong person.

3. I also think our own sense of personal guilt

sometimes makes it difficult

for us to trust that our God is abounding in riches for all who call upon Him...

It is possible for us to be so ashamed of ourselves,

so disappointed with our own conduct

that we cannot imagine how our God

could ever have anything other than condemnation for us.

That’s why God set the beginning point of trust where He did -

trusting Him with our sins.

That becomes the crucial doorway

into our growing discovery of our God.

He starts with the worst of what we have to offer Him,

the junk,

the stuff that causes us our greatest sense of shame

and He says, “I’ll take that, thank you...all of it,

and I’ll remove it from your account forever.”

4. A fourth major hindrance to our trust response to God

is the fact that every human reasoning process we have ever learned

has been based upon the assumption

that God isn’t to be trusted,

or won’t care,

or isn’t there.

Trust does not come naturally

because it goes directly against

everything we have ever learned

or understood about life.

From the day we are born

until the day we come to Christ

every one of us diligently builds a life that excludes the reality of our God.

And even after we come to Christ

all of those conditioned responses and reasoning processes remain in place

and function as our initial response base

to every situation.

From there, we must fight our way into faith

one day, one issue at a time.

5. A fifth hindrance to a trust response to our Heavenly Father

may be our earthly fathers.

We all tend to view God initially

as being similar to our human father,

and if our human father was not abounding in riches for us as children when we called out to him,

it will be more difficult for us

to see our God in that light.

6. And the last hindrance I’d mention

is the distorted concept of “riches”

that we all bring into our relationship with God.

Even though,

in our rare moments of honesty,

we know that famous people are often far more miserable than we are,

and rich people

are frequently far more unhappy

than those of us who have far less money,

still, our definition of “riches”

begins with what our culture considers to be correct.

Many years ago I was talking with a Jr. High boy about his goals for life.

At the time

Sandee and I were living at MaryDale Manor

where our sole income came from managing apartments.

We were driving a Ford Pinto

with a tailpipe held together

by a Campbell’s soup can clamped around it.

It would have been difficult for me to have been much farther away

from being either rich or famous

than I was at that point in my life.

The young man I was talking with

was telling me about all the things he wanted to buy,

things he just knew he needed to have

in order to be happy.

Then I asked him a question.

I said, “Who is the happiest person you know personally?”

He thought for a minute, and then he said, “You are.”

I told him that I was the happiest person I knew, too.

Even then my God had poured out upon me such great riches.

But they were riches the world could not see -

the were riches rooted in the people I loved...and the people who loved me.

Then I asked him where he thought I fit in the whole rich and famous thing

and he had to admit I wasn’t even on the list.

But I could tell he still wasn’t buying it...

he just knew I was an exception

and if his pathway to happiness would just have to be one paved with wealth and fame.

Sometimes I think we have trouble

seeing our God as abounding in riches for all who call upon Him...

because we are measuring wealth

by a severely flawed standard.