7/29/07 A Few Unanswered Questions

We are not going to return to our study of the Gospel of John this morning,

because I have a few things that I need to tidy up from last week.

I had several questions come my way after our time together last week

and I think they are important enough for me to answer them publicly.

The first concerns a near quote from Romans chapter nine that I included in my talk.

What I said was, “what do we do with a God

who reserves for Himself

the absolute right to mold the clay into any form He chooses,

making one lump into a vessel for honor

and another into a vessel for dishonor?”

And what Paul says in Romans 9 is this.

ROM 9:19-21 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

And the question I was asked was, “So then what? Is it just tough luck and no hope for that guy that God decides to form into a vessel for dishonor? That doesn’t seem very fair.”

Good question, huh?

What I said in response was a good deal shorter than what I’ll say now,

but I think the question is important enough

for us to spend some time on it together.

You see, the problem we run into here

is that, because God has given us real, true free will,

free will with which we can each literally determine our eternal destinies,

and because we all enter this world separated from God

and unable and at first unwilling to hear His voice,

we therefore tend to believe

that we really do have the power to cut God out of our lives.

Those who reject God and His offer of love and redemption

tend to believe that by their rejection they have then successfully excluded God from any involvement in their life.

But it doesn’t work that way.

We can reject God,

but the Creator reserves for Himself the absolute right

to use every human being for His desired ends,

whether we reject Him or not.

And there are many times when He will use non-Christians

to accomplish His purposes in the world,

and not just in the world but in the lives of His people

In fact He does it continually.

Many of the greatest works He’s ever done in my life

He’s done through non-Christians,

using them for His specific purposes in my life.

They didn’t know He was doing it,

and would have been furious at me if I would have suggested it,

but that’s exactly what was happening.

Just recently I have seen Him use a non-Christian who held a key position of authority

to bring about a major work of deliverance and protection in a Christian’s life

when there was no logical reason why the person should have done so

and in fact they faced strong pressures against it.

When I saw what God was doing

and realized that the person had no idea they were literally being used by God for His purposes

in the life of one of His children,

I remembered that remarkable statement in Proverbs 21:1.

The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes.

God’s commitment to work through those who hold authority over us,

whether they are deeply committed Christians

or pagan to the core, is absolute.

Certainly our choices concerning how we respond to our God

do have a profound impact on the quality of life we live.

But no matter how we may choose to respond to or resist the voice of our Creator,

still He reserves for Himself

the right to work through any person He chooses,

any time He chooses,

to accomplish any purpose He chooses in the lives of His people.

So here’s the way it works.

If we choose to place our lives into His hands,

He responds to that choice by placing His Spirit within us,

and then literally living His life out through us,

forming us into incredible vessels of honor -

people whose lives literally change the course of our world for good.

And wonder of wonders, He even shares His glory with us in the process.

Some of the praise and gratitude and credit that rightfully belongs to Him

slops over onto us,

and He’s just fine with that.

In fact, He delights in seeing His children receiving honor

for the things He Himself has accomplished in and through them.

In one of His final conversations with His men prior to His death

Jesus made the following comment.

JOH 12:26 "...if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.”

Ever been with a father when he has seen his child doing well

and then heard him say, “That’s my son!” “That’s my daughter!”?

We affect our Heavenly Father the same way,

and He loves to share His glory with us.

But for those who reject Him,

He still reserves for Himself the right to use them for His purposes

both in His plan for the world and in the lives of His people.

We can fight against God’s involvement in our lives,

we can try to run from Him,

we can pretend He isn’t there,

but nothing we do changes the way things are -

we are created beings

and our Creator can and will accomplish whatever He chooses

through whomever He chooses

whether we recognize it or not,

whether we acknowledge it or not.

And the only way this makes sense to us

is when we understand why He does what He does.

And I’ll let Paul explain that

because He does it so much better than I ever could.

Paul says, (ROM 8:28) And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

God will do whatever He will do,

but the amazing thing is that what He’s chosen to do

is to work all things together for the greater good of those who turn to Him.

So, to answer my own question,

“What do we do with a God

who reserves for Himself

the absolute right to mold the clay into any form He chooses,

making one lump into a vessel for honor

and another into a vessel for dishonor?”,

what we do is to thank Him

that it is His amazing love for us

that has prompted Him to do all that He does.

He cannot yet eliminate evil from the world,

or suffering,

or pain

without also eliminating our free will to choose to either accept or reject His love.

But He does promise us that He is actively involved in, well...

in causing “ ... all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Rom. 8:28

Family membership has it’s privileges.

And then the next question that came up last week

concerns a statement I quoted from our Lord

when we were listening to Him at that point where so many of His followers turned away from Him.

It’s found at the end of John chapter 6 where He says,

JOH 6:53-58 So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever."

And I was asked to say a little bit more about that business of eating His flesh and drinking His blood.

And before I do

let me just acknowledge that it is obvious why those who originally heard these words spoken by the Master

found them to be both so offensive

and so confusing.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life...

Now really,

what were they suppose to do with that?

And it wasn’t until after Jesus’ death and resurrection

and especially after the knowledge revealed to us through the writings of John, Paul, and Peter

that we could correctly understand what Jesus was saying.

So then what is He saying?

Well, in a way He’s doing the same type of thing here

that John does in 1John 1:7 when he says,

... the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

Is John suggesting that the only ones whose sins have been cleansed by God

are those who physically removed the body of Christ from the cross,

and who, in the process,

got some of Jesus’ blood on their hands

and who were then, because of that physical blood touching them, cleansed from their sins?

Was he telling us that we must somehow come into contact

with the literal physical blood of Jesus Christ

in order for us to have our sins forgiven?

Of course not.

In God’s communication of Himself to us

He uses a wide variety of communication tools and techniques

in His efforts to communicate the truth to us.

There are times when He calls Jesus “the Light”,

or “the Word”,

or “living water”,

or “the bread of life”.

And with each of these we understand

that He’s using words in a unique way in an attempt to help us understand

both who He is and how He relates to us.

And when He talks with us about the body of Christ,

or the flesh of Christ,

or the blood of Christ,

all of these are simply vivid visual images

of the physical death of Jesus Christ on that Roman cross 2000 years ago.

And when He talks about our eating the flesh of Christ

and drinking His blood,

He is using powerful imagery to tell us

that eternal life comes to us as a direct result of our sharing in that physical death.

We enter into His death

and His death enters into us

in a way that allows us to share in the payment that He was making for sin.

And why did He choose such powerful, graphic language at this point in His communication with the Jews?

Well, I think it’s possible that He wanted to shock them

into a radically new understanding

of the true source, the only source of eternal life.

You see He was talking to a group of people

who honestly, absolutely believed that eternal life was theirs by right

because they were God’s chosen people,

the descendants of Abraham,

and because they faithfully kept the laws of God.

And the crucial message they needed to hear,

the one upon which their eternal destiny depended,

was that there was only one source of eternal life for the human race.

Eternal life comes only to those who share in His death.

To eat the flesh of Christ

and to drink His blood

means to choose to take His death into yourself

as your only sure and certain means of salvation.

It means to choose to personally share in His death.

And how do we do that?

Well, Paul tells us we do it simply by believing He’s telling us the truth

when He tells us that Christ was literally paying our debt with His own death.

Does that sound strange?

Does it sound too simple?

Do you remember how the human race lost its union with God?

What did Adam and Eve refuse to do?

They refused to believe what God said to them about the tree in the Garden.

And look at this!

All God asks from us

in order to find absolute forgiveness forever

and to enter into a perfect love union with Him once again

is that we do what Adam and Eve refused to do.

We choose to believe what He’s told us about another tree,

a Roman tree onto which Jesus Christ was nailed,

to believe that what happened on that tree

paid our sin debt forever.

Just believe.

And then, since I’ve taken the morning to tidy up things left over from last week,

there’s one more thing I’d like to do before I close.

If you were here last week

you will remember that I shared with you

a little bit of my own personal pilgrimage

as I have grown in my own understanding

of the intensely personal nature of God’s love for me.

I shared with you that, at a crucial time in my own life,

God communicated Himself to me in a way that made me realize

that He understood me and my needs,

and my fears,

and my feelings,

and my own inner brokenness,

and that He not only understood,

but that He cared at a depth I couldn’t even begin to imagine,

and He felt what I felt,

and He knew exactly how to bring healing into my life.

In other words,

I discovered that my God really truly loves me,

and that it’s not just some sort of generic love for humanity,

but that it is more deeply personal than I could ever even begin to understand.

Then, when I finished I told you that this knowledge has caused me some measure of frustration

when it comes to my teaching

because I know that what you long for most

I can never give you.

I can give you knowledge,

truth,

principles,

facts about your God.

But I cannot give you an awareness of His love.

Only He can do that,

and with most of us

only after a great deal of personal preparation in our lives,

bringing us to the place where we can finally hear His voice and believe.

But what I can do for you

and what I will do to the best of my ability

is to create for you a safe environment in which you can grow in your knowledge of Him.

Well, I’ve thought about that a great deal this past week,

and I think I need to say a little more about that whole thing before I leave it.

You see, I think there is something else I can do

for those of you who truly want to know His love in a personal way.

As I’ve thought about this whole thing this past week

I’ve realized that part of our problem here

is that we always begin our thinking about discovering the love of God from our side.

By that I mean that we are forever wondering what we can do

in order to discover His love.

And if we have little or no awareness of His love

we come up with all sorts of strange and utterly wrong conclusions

about why we don’t feel loved by Him.

At the top of the list of dumb conclusions we reach

is the assumption that God must be mad at us,

that He’s turned away from us or separated Himself from us

because we have fallen short of His expectations for us.

From there we then assume that, if we can somehow improve our performance in some area

then He will once again accept us

and reveal His love to us.

Do you know what Paul calls that kind of thinking?

He calls it “falling from grace”.

In fact, his language is rather brutal.

GAL 5:4 You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

You see, when we think that way

what we are really doing is calling God a liar.

We are telling Him

that the death of Jesus Christ was not really full payment for our sins,

and that we must make up what is lacking in the debt owed,

and if we do not deliver whatever He wants delivered

then He will not take us solely on the basis of our faith in Christ’s death.

Let me state it as clearly as I can.

When we believe that God turns away from us when we sin

we are telling God that Christ failed,

that His death was not an adequate payment for our sins,

and that something more is needed from us.

We are telling Him He failed in what He was attempting to do through Christ.

We are telling Him that Jesus Christ was an utter failure.

Of course I will certainly affirm that there are all sorts of things

that have the power to prevent us from knowing the reality of God’s love for us.

I spent most of my life not hearing it.

In fact we all enter this world

completely unable to hear His love on a personal level.

But I realized again this past week

something that is so basic,

so entry level in our dealings with our God,

and yet so easily forgotten.

And it’s simply this -

that everything God is doing in the life of every person on this planet

He’s doing in order to find some way of bringing us into the knowledge of His love.

And the real question we need to wrestle with

is not what must I do in order to find the love of God,

but rather what is God doing in my life right now

in His efforts to communicate His love to me.

But this will only make sense when we make it personal.

You see with everyone of us here this morning

right now God is actively involved in seeking some way

of bringing each of us into the personal knowledge of His love for us.

It is what He’s doing.

It isn’t one of the things He’s doing,

it is the only thing He’s doing.

That’s what it’s all about,

what it’s always been about from the very beginning.

So, if you have little or no awareness of His love right now,

the place to begin is to look at what you see God seeking to do in your life right now

because He is doing what He’s doing

as part of His necessary preparation in your life for your being able to hear His love.

I’m not saying this as well as I’d like.

Let’s try this.

I believe that with every one of us

there is a unique doorway in our lives

through which we can hear the love of our God.

It is our own unique divine love language,

a pathway into our souls through which we can hear and believe our God

when He tells us He loves us.

But this pathway is blocked with all sorts of barriers

that must be removed before we can hear.

Some of them are lies we believe about God,

some are wounds we have received in childhood - wounds that must be healed,

some are lies we believe about the ways in which our needs can be met -

needs for love,

for security,

for a sense of purpose in life,

for how we can gain recognition and affirmation and respect from others.

Some of the barriers come from deep fears within us,

fears of God,

fears of life itself.

Some of those barriers come from a deep distrust of God in what He says to us,

especially when He talks with us

about how we should handle our failures,

or how we should relate to the authorities He has placed over us.

It’s like trying to walk down a hiking trail following a massive windstorm

and finding tree after tree laying across the trail.

Right now God is in the process of seeking to remove those trees in your own life.

And what you need to know most of all

is that He’s doing what He’s doing

because He wants to open that pathway within you

through which you will at last be able to hear His love.

He’s not doing what He’s doing because He’s ticked at you

and wants to try to straighten up your life.

He’s doing it because He knows where that doorway is into your soul,

the doorway through which you will finally be able to receive His love,

and He knows those things that block the pathway to that door.

So, how do we hear His love?

Whatever He’s saying to you right now,

whatever He’s doing in your life right now - trust Him, even if what He’s doing looks like death,

because what He’s doing He’s doing in order to bring you into life as you’ve never known it before -

life lived in the center of His love.