Sunday AM – Lynn Haven – 12/09/07
FOCUS:
• Manipulating God
• Surrendering to God
FUNCTION:
• To open people’s eyes to the true intentions of their heart in terms of why they worship God
A. Pleasantries
B. This is a sermon that we all should have heard a dozen times already, and I dare say that none of us ever has.
C. It goes to the very core of
1. our relationship to God,
2. how we think about Him,
3. and how we live our lives in relation to Him.
D. And we’re going to begin with a simple realization
1. The realization is this: At one point or another in our lives, we have each tried to manipulate God.
a. Some of us may still be trying to do so.
b. But at one point or another, we’ve tried to harness the power & will of God for our own interests.
c. We’ve tried to manipulate God.
2. We weren’t interested in God’s will, but our own.
a. “Not thy will but MINE be done!”
b. But whatever method, we have all tried to take the God’s choice away & compel him to choose to appease our own will.
3. That is what manipulation is. It’s what separates manipulation from mere influence.
a. Influence is trying to sway the opinion of someone – to get someone else to act in a way you wish, but allowing them to act according to their own will.
b. Manipulation, rather, robs someone of their choice.
c. It compels a desired action from someone who is being robbed of their free will to choose.
d. And the main problem we have with trying to manipulate God is that we don’t have the kind of power that it takes to take away from God His ability to choose.
E. Leaders of Christian movements have tried to prevent such thinking with false teaching
1. I mean, we see in Scripture where it seems like people influence God’s decision-making, because he is compassionate.
2. And so, for centuries, the medieval church upheld the doctrine of the impassibility of God.
a. That is, stating that God is utterly without passion.
b. To say that God is impassioned means two things:
1) That God is emotionally unstable or erratic
2) That God may possibly be manipulated emotionally.
c. So it was thought that since God is neither unstable or capable of being manipulated, God had to be pronounced impassible (wholly without passion).
3. This, of course, was the wrong step to take.
4. God clearly has passion. But He is neither unstable nor susceptible to manipulation.
F. We even see folks in Scripture who seek to manipulate God for their own gain.
1. King Balak in Numbers 22
In the Old Testament there was a soothsayer named Balaam who God allowed to have certain powers. He appeared to be quite faithful, for when Balak, the king of Moab, offered him money to curse the Israelites, his response was (Num 22:18): “Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not do anything, either small or great, contrary to the command of the LORD my God.” Does this sound familiar?
The problem was, Balaam coveted the treasures offered to him. He thought he could “beat the system” by manipulating God to serve his own personal desires. And, while he never did curse the Israelites, he was willing to tell Balak how to corrupt the Israelites by having them commit fornication with the women of Moab (Rev. 2:14). He convinced himself that he was doing God’s will while practicing the ways of the world. Balaam died by the sword for his sin, and his sin is referenced often throughout the bible (e.g., 2 Pet. 2:15, Jude. 1:11).
2. Simon the Sorcerer
A second case involved a man named Simon, who had long sought the approval of men. His story is in Acts 8:9f. The bible clearly says that he believed and was baptized. He was greatly impressed with the miracles that confirmed the new teachings. However, when the apostles came down to Samaria to impart miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit to them, Simon offered them money, saying, “Give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” He was immediately rebuked by Peter, and fortunately, he repented of his sin.
G. You may be thinking, “Well you say we’ve all done this, but I don’t know if I’ve ever done anything like that.”
1. Well let’s look at exactly how we try to manipulate God.
I. Action – If I just do everything right, God will be forced to react kindly to me
A. Unfortunately, people commonly find ways to reduce religious relationship into religious rules & regulations.
1. If “I” keep the “correct” rules & follow the “correct” regulations, “I” obligate God to behave as “I” want because “I” did all the right things.
2. Thus, if we are not honest with ourselves, obedience acquires the objective of manipulating God rather than serving God.
B. Instead of seeking to please & appreciate God for who He is & what He has done, our obedience becomes an attempt to control our surroundings & manipulate God.
C. Sadly, this is the thinking of many legalistic believers.
1. They wouldn’t overtly admit it
2. But these are the theological underpinnings of it.
D. We try to manipulate God by our action.
II. Incantation – If I just pray with just the right words in just the right order, God will be forced to grant my wishes
A. Ever done this?
1. Ever thought your prayers weren’t being heard because you weren’t doing it right?
2. Ever been more deliberate with your word choice to try to get it right?
B. Prayer of Jabez
1. Bruce Wilkinson
2. Little prayer in 1st Chronicles 4 between chapters chock full of genealogies.
3. “Pray this way…”
C. And this is little more than voo-doo or witch-craft – seeking to manipulate powerful spirits to accomplish & execute your will.
D. Look at Romans 8:26.
III. Bargaining – God, if you will do X, I promise that I will do Y for Z amount of time.
A. Think back to Creation: this is the part of the story you never heard.
B. Often, bargaining is the very first serious conversation we ever have with God.
Up ’til that point, our Mother’s have usually been covering the prayer front for us. All of a sudden, there we are in third grade. We have not studied the multiplication tables at all and Mrs. Anderson throws a pop quiz at us. A quick and futile glance at the dense list that tabulates all the way to 12 x 12… "God, who can ever remember 12 x 12?"
Then we start, "God, if Marcy Fogelman’s paper can come into view during this test, I promise I’ll will not curse for a whole week… make that a business week… 5 days… I have a baseball game on Saturday and …" Who has not done that? Every one of us has… more than once.
C. Who has never done that? EVERY ONE OF US has! MORE than once!
D. The promises get bigger when more is at stake.
If we are concerned about it, then God ought to be concerned about it right? I mean we are talking about our lives here! The logic of this reaches it’s fullest logical irony in sports, particularly here in the South, where every Saturday both football teams meet in the dressing room or out on the field, asking the Almighty to bless their effort to pummel the mess out of their opponents… “In the name of Jesus, who died rather than raise a finger to inflict violence… Amen." Go kick some butt boys…
E. It’s tough, isn’t it?
In the Bible, we are promised that God is faithful with us. But we are not promised that we can bind God. It doesn’t work like that despite the fact that we keep trying to do it over and over and over again.
It is true, speaking theologically, that from the biblical point of view, God covenants with us. God made promises to Abraham and Sarah, to Moses, and in those promises there is a structure to God’s relationship with us… That relationship is characterized by freedom, by love, by justice, by peace, by hope unto development and growth. There is a moral and spiritual direction to what God wants us to become and how we should live with each other.
But we cannot bind God. Our bargains are not effective. But I have enormous sympathy for people that strike bargains with God, deeply I do. Desperate times call for desperate measures. These situations are almost always full of human pathos.
And I understand the anger and the frustration in these situations. "God what have you done for me lately?" I understand the response that some people have like a woman who once said for me, "I think after all this that I’m done with God. What good is God anyway?" There is a goodness to God, but I understand the depth of disappointment in a world where things break that you can’t fix, where people & things that you love fall apart. It hurts. It is completely normal to lash out at God in anger, and I have to believe that God can take it.
F. We can’t bargain, though…
The spiritual reality is more like this. We can pray healing prayer but not all things can be cured. We can envision hope but not all outcomes can be determined. We can focus peace and justice but not all evil can be stopped. No matter how much we may want it.
IV. Bribery – God, if you don’t give me what I want, I’ll do (OR never do) X, Y, or Z
A. This is BARGAIN’S ugly cousin.
So how CAN we get God on our side???
V. Surrender – Relinquish Control
Bargaining takes this form: "Okay, God, I realize I’m vulnerable, and I’ll give you my life and turn to you if..." Here you fill in the blanks with the details, but it usually amounts to the same thing. You’ll give in if God removes your problem--restores the relationship, returns the money, prospers the business, heals the debility, etc.
Do you know what that is? It’s a prayer that you’ll follow God if He’ll restore your former way of life--the former way that was self-sufficient, in which you didn’t need God because you could do it yourself. People who are toppled from that self-sufficiency are immediately aware of their need, so they ask to be restored to the safety of their own self-sufficiency.
These people are turning to God, to be sure, but it’s a particular kind of turning. It’s an appeal that God restore their autonomy. When He does--and only when He does--they’ll consider His claim on their life, not from a position of weakness, but from a position of strength.
If God accepted those terms, I think that there would hardly be a single one of us who would ever come back. Why? Because we got what we wanted from God. You see, when we’re bargaining it’s clear we don’t want God; we want our old life back--our own capabilities, our own riches, our own relationship, our own health--we want our power, prosperity and autonomy back. If God gave it to us, there’d be no more felt need for Him. Sure, He might get some lip service from us along the way, a quick thank-you maybe, but little else.
A. Manipulation is a power play with its core value being rebellion against the Will & authority of God.
1. Let’s give up the charade of “control” and turn your will over to God
2. Let’s surrender not just our actions, but our hearts over to God
B. Let’s have a dedicated time of prayer & fasting not as a way of manipulating God into doing what we desire. Rather, let’s simply force ourselves to rely on God (and HIS control) for strength, provision, and wisdom.
CONCLUSION
We all have to ask ourselves the question:
Are we religious to manipulate God for what we can get out of it? ... or are we serving and obeying our Lord because we Love Him and trust that His way is best for us than any other way we could make for ourselves?
