Sermon for CATM – September 23, 2007 - Approaching God with Confidence
Hebrews 4:14-16 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Show Video: I Am With You [See Sermonspice.com]
“I am with you”. That’s a powerful statement. A powerful truth. What does that mean to you? God is with you. God goes with you. He goes before you. His presence goes ahead of us. But what does this mean? Really. What does it mean to enter into God’s presence?
The book of Esther explains a very normal practice in early times: 4:11 "All the king’s officials and the people of the royal provinces know that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned the king has but one law: that he be put to death. The only exception to this is for the king to extend the gold scepter to him and spare his life”.
This was very typical in ancient times. A person had to be welcomed by the king and could never just walk up to him. People had respect for the office of king. If they didn’t…if they were from that land and they breached this important rule, they didn’t tend to survive for long.
Of course the living God doesn’t need to hold out a scepter and He’s not going to prevent us from coming to Him. But there are things in us that will prevent us from coming to him. What are the things that prevent us from entering God’s presence with confidence?
There are at least three things that block us from coming to God, coming willingly and knowingly and expectantly into His presence.
Unbelief
Heb 3:7-13 So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, ’Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ’They shall never enter my rest.’" See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
At the most basic level, if we don’t believe in God, we’re not going even think about coming into his presence. That much is obvious.
The writer of Hebrews is getting at something different from complete ignorance of God here. He’s suggesting first of all that we can behave like we don’t believe. The people of Israel who had witnessed God’s miraculous power and had experienced their own deliverance from slavery…they, even having faith because of the miracles they saw…they failed to act in a way consistent with what they knew to be true of God.
Isn’t that something we can do so easily!?! Our lifestyle choices can come to no longer reflect the faith we profess. I’m not talking about just sinning.
Of course we all sin and stumble, sometimes badly, sometimes not so badly…but then we come to our senses, ask for forgiveness with the clear intention of stopping that behaviour, and God graciously restores us to Himself.
The Scriptures says of the people who wandered the desert: “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways”. So the encouragement here is to be careful. There is so much to be gained by being in right relationship with God. There is so much to be lost by taking that relationship for granted.
Hebrews 4:2 says this to those whose unbelief is the thing blocking them coming into God’s presence: “For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith”.
It gets worse. There’s another way that unbelief gets in the way. Hebrews points out the problem: 2:1 “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away”.
There’s an unfortunate but natural human tendency to, unless we exercise great care, drift away from commitments. Married couples who do not take special care in their relationships can drift apart…to the point of feeling like strangers dwelling in the same house.
Friends who are “best friends forever”…what is that in the MSN dialect…”BFF”? Friends that one day pledge their love and support for each other…can soon find themselves drifting away.
Did you know that we can also drift in our understanding of God? I call this theological drift, and I’ve seen a lot of it…among Christians of all stripes, including pastors. Truths that we once held firmly to seem less important.
The commitment to hold the Word of God in the highest place of honour and authority in our lives begins to shift. As society around us changes, as people’s values shift away from those rooted in Scripture, we can start to find reasons to compromise.
The issue here is complex, as it has always been. And it comes down to fundamental choices and fundamental responsibilities. But it’s also kind of simple.
Whose voice do we chose to listen to? In our world there are a thousand voices mouthing a thousand opinions. Many of those opinions are contradictory. Many of those voices exclude faith, or they relativize truth.
Every few months someone makes a lot of money on a book that attacks the core beliefs of the Christian faith.
And the public soaks it up. We have a lot of opportunities, frankly, to listen to a lot of voices that will lead us astray, cause us to lose confidence in the Word of God…even in the person of Jesus Christ…if we let them.
What does God’s Word say to us: 2:1 “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away”.
We must be careful with the treasure that is our life and our faith. Faith is not fragile…at least there’s no need for it to be fragile...but it needs care. It needs attention. It needs watering. It needs the Holy Spirit as a companion who we continually welcome in to our lives.
The challenge we face is this: Do not allow anything other than the Spirit of God and the Word of God to hold that key place of authority in your life. If we hold to God’s Word, we will find a way into God’s presence.
Another obstacle to entering into God’s presence is a bit less complex than the problem of unbelief. It is “Wrong Ideas About God”. If we see God as judge, as cruel and unknowable, we will not be inclined to enter His presence. Where do we get wrong ideas about God? If we grew up in Christian families but were aware of a lot of hypocrisy in those families, we’re going to suspect God.
If we grew up in other faiths where God is understood commonly as severe and distant, we will suspect God. If our Christian tradition emphasized some biblical descriptions of God in an unbalanced way, our chief understanding of God may be wrapped up in another passage from Hebrews: that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”.
If we’re not taught that mercy triumphs over judgment, if we’re not taught that God is love, if we’re not really clear that Jesus was the friend of sinners, as he was accused and criticized as being by his foes, then there’s a good chance we’re going to have wrong ideas about God.
And of course there is the problem of sin. If our consciences are not clear, we will find ourselves trying to avoid thinking about God at all. Why? One word: Shame.
Shame is a powerful emotion . By itself it is a huge impediment to entering God’s presence. There is one positive thing that shame indicates though. It indicates that our consciences are still alive. We still know right from wrong.
We still have some sense of self-respect even if it feels like it’s on its last legs.
There are too many examples in the entertainment world and elsewhere of people who have no shame…people who wouldn’t know right from wrong if it bit them on the…nose.
Nevertheless, sin is a clear barrier to coming to God.
Now if those things…unbelief, wrong ideas about God and sin… if those things represent the main problems we can have entering God’s presence, what are the things that enable us to come to God with confidence.
The first and most important thing is humility. By humility I don’t mean at all doubting ourselves. Or hesitating to express our opinion. Some people confuse humility with insecurity and that is not the case.
To be humble means to be aware of your limitations. It means that we are not puffed up in our own eyes. A friend of mine refers to arrogant people as “people who are legends in their own minds”.
William Temple, the author of the book “Christ in His Church” says: "Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all.
The great missionary Hudson Taylor was scheduled to speak at a huge church in Melbourne, Australia. The moderator of the service introduced the missionary in eloquent and glowing terms.
He told the large congregation all that Taylor had accomplished in China, and then presented him as "our illustrious guest." Taylor stood quietly for a moment, and then opened his message by saying, "Dear friends, I am the little servant of an illustrious Master."
Really great people have a feeling that the greatness is not in them but through them; that they could not do or be anything else than God made them. And there’s the rub. Humility means in our hearts if not out loud pointing any praise we receive graciously back to God.
Winston Churchill was once asked, "Doesn’t it thrill you to know that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing?" "It’s quite flattering," replied Sir Winston. "But whenever I feel that way, I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big."
To be humble is to recognize our need for God…for his salvation, yes. But also for intimacy with him. Proximity to God requires humility.
As we as a church increasingly orient ourselves to being here for the community,
as we grow to understand that we exist here not for the benefit of our ourselves but for those who have yet to join this family or be blessed through this body of believers, we need to stop. And think.
Francis Frangipane, a noted author, said this: “God can never entrust His Kingdom to anyone who has not been broken of pride, for pride is the armor of darkness itself”.
This speaks to the importance of humility. Both for our mission in this community […and this community is, it needs to be stated, our primary mission field as a church]…both for our mission as a church in this community as for us as individuals…humility is key.
Andrew Murray said: “Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is for me to have no trouble; never to be fretted or vexed or irritated or sore or disappointed. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.
It is to be at rest when nobody praises me and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace as in a deep sea of calmness when all around is trouble.
“Humility” is the fruit of the Lord Jesus Christ’s redemptive work on Calvary’s cross...” Someone else said: “God descends to the humble as waters flow down from the hills into the valleys”.
What else enables us to come into God’s presence?
Confidence in the Word of God. Satan knows that this is huge. People get seriously tripped up when they allow their confidence in God’s Word to be eroded. Once it’s eroded, they are like people cast out to sea with no idea what to believe, no idea who God is or who they are.
We’ve already touched on one way that confidence or faith in God’s Word can be eroded. It happens when we listen to voices that discredit faith; when we fail to discern that the agenda of those voices is to eliminate faith or to water down faith until it is toothless.
Every believer since the very first believer has had to exercise discernment in this regard. To do so, and to hold fast to God’s Word as powerful and wholly trustworthy is to steer far away from being spiritually shipwrecked.
Why is confidence in God’s Word so important? Let’s go to the source: “4: 12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart”.
I like the Message paraphrase of this passage: “12-13God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey”.
Confidence in the Word of God puts us in a place of allowing God to penetrate our hearts, of reaching deep into our lives, into our spirits and doing his healing work. His loving work.
When we do this we realize our profound connection to Jesus Christ in whom we discover our identity, our very worth.
I have strong feelings against those who would seek to rob Christians of their worth by seeking to discredit God’s Word. We must be vigilant. We must be faithful. This is a key to being able to enter God’s presence with confidence.
There are at least two more things that enable us to enter God’s presence with confidence. The first is very hard. The second is not so hard, once we get accustomed to it.
The first is this: [PPT] Holiness. You know, sometimes that very word intimidates me. And it’s not just the word. It’s what the Bible says about that word. What does God say? “Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy”.
If you feel like I do, ever, how are we to wrap our heads around this clearly impossible command? What’s the point of such an impossible command? Wouldn’t “Be 1/billionth as holy as I am holy?” be a little closer to realistic?
The point of this command, and why holiness is a key to entering God’s presence with confidence is twofold: Firstly, God wants us to aspire to more than mediocrity. I don’t know about you but if I’m writing a song or even preparing a sermon and if I aim for “just so-so”, I fall miserably short of mediocre.
Aiming for “just good enough” always will result in much less than good enough. Aiming for godliness…aiming to be holy like God is holy…Wow, that sets a standard that’s not here [stretch and hold out hand up high], it’s as high or higher than I can imagine. To infinity and beyond.
If I aim for that high, and rely on God’s companionship and power…I just might do ok. So the call to “be holy as God is holy” is the call to aim very high. To compromise nothing.
Secondly, about this holiness issue…and hopefully more down to earth and accessible to us…God clearly, clearly wants to be very close to us. He wants that kind of intimacy because He knows how incredibly life-giving it is for us to be in His presence.
But God knows that I am a sinful man. He knows that we are sinners. Sometimes I think the problem is…that we don’t know, really, that we are sinners.
If we do know or we’re discovering that we are sinful people, and yet we hear the command to be holy…what are we to do?
Look to Jesus, cleave to Jesus, who makes you holy.
What does God’s Word have to say about Jesus and his power to make us holy:
1:3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
Jesus is God. His radiance. He is exactly God. He dealt with our sins, once and for all, and makes us, who believe in His name, who believe in His sacrifice, acceptable to God.
7: 25-27 Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest meets our need--one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
Jesus is the final word on our relationship with God. There is no part of us that remains unacceptable to God in the light of Jesus sacrifice. We might think we’re unworthy. Of course we’re unworthy. That’s the point.
Jesus is our sacrifice before God…completely holy, utterly blameless, perfectly pure. He dealt with that which makes us unholy before God once for all when He gave his life for you and for me.
9:13-14 The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
And here’s the key. He cleanses our consciences. All of the good reasons we may have for not coming into God’s presence…unbelief, wrong ideas about God and, most importantly…sin…are dealt with by Jesus. What does He say to our unbelief?
Matthew 17: 20 Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ’Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
If we come to Jesus with our little seed of faith, and we ask Him sincerely to grow it he is capable of maturing our faith into something wonderful. You may know that my dad is an atheist. Sometimes he calls himself an agnostic. Yet at the lowest points of his life, he has longed for faith. That longing-for-faith is fertile soul into which God can plant faith that can spring up and surprise the greatest skeptic.
What does Jesus say to our wrong beliefs about God? Luke 10:22b “No one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
John 14:6-7 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."
THE way to know God is through Jesus. Do you want to know what God thinks like? Look at what Jesus said.
Do you want to know how God acts? Look at how Jesus acts.
What does Jesus say to our sin? To the fact that our sin distances us from God. Makes it impossible to come to Him?
Eph 2:13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. You have been brought near. You have been made holy. Acceptable completely to the living God. There is no barrier remaining when you believe and receive the gift of Jesus sacrifice.
THAT is why we can approach the throne of grace, enter into the presence of God. It’s actually not up to us to get ourselves clean enough to be near God. Jesus has done it. Am I making this sound too simple? Well…what does Scripture say remains for us to do regarding our sin?
If we don’t have to atone for it; if we need to take seriously the call to holiness but rely on Jesus Christ’s holiness to be in right relationship with God, what then does the Scripture say we must do?
1 John 1: 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Wow. Really?!? Because of all that Jesus has done, forgiveness is that close by? It’s that uncomplicated to be able to enter the presence of God? That’s the wonder of it all. There was nothing easy about Jesus’ suffering…but His suffering was in our place.
There was nothing easy about Jesus dying…but He died in our place. This is why we worship. We worship the Saviour of the world who has done everything possible to give us His peace.
Truth be told, without Jesus no one could get anywhere near God. Sin would always block access to the Father. But the Son…the Son has made a way.
If you have never said “Yes!” to God, I urge you to today. If you don’t know the peace of God. I implore you to come today to the risen Son of God, who has made a way through his blood shed on the cross for you and I to come boldly before the throne of God. Know Him today. Receive Him today…and let yourself be transformed into His likeness as his Spirit fills your life and renews your hope.
How shall we conclude? There’s no better way than Hebrews 10: 19-23 Therefore, brothers (and sisters), since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful”.
Let’s pray. God, the sense I get is that you want us to approach you just as Jesus describes you. As our beloved Father. To come into the room where You are, to see you and run to you and jump up in to your arms. And hug you. And just be loved. God, we gladly enter your presence by the precious and holy blood of Jesus Christ, who died for us. Who died for us because of Your love for us. We worship you. We exalt you. We humble ourselves before your throne. And we enter your rest, held firmly in your loving embrace. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
