The BIG Misconception
It happened only this past week. A co-worker came to me with all kinds of questions about our church. He asked what times the services were and what types of music we played. He wanted to know about Sunday school for his two young daughters and whether or not I thought his family would be accepted by the people here.
Then he told me about his best friend when he had been growing up. You see, his best friend from the time he was in kindergarten to the time he graduated from high school was the son of a preacher. So every Sunday he attended church with his friend. He accepted Jesus as his savior and was baptized when he was eleven or twelve. When high school came though every Sunday changed to once or twice a month. By the time he graduated, despite still being best friends with the preacher’s son, he wasn’t going to church at all.
“I want my daughters to know there is a God,” he told me.
I thought what a courageous father. What an awesome step toward God.
Then he dropped a bomb. What he said shocked me to a point that I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t know what to tell him.
He said, “I’ve got some things I need to work on first though. I’ve got problems. I need to get my life straightened out first. Until I do God wouldn’t want me to be there. I wouldn’t be accepted.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone tell me this. In fact, some of you have heard this very same thing before.
This is the biggest misconception there is to Christianity today!
Honestly, I think it has two parts. Here they are.
Misconception #1: If I behave right God will accept me.
Let me just take a minute to explain this one. There are people in this world that believe that if they obey the rules, if they do what God has told them to do, if they dress the right way, if they sing the right kind of songs, if they do the right kind of work, God is going to accept them. That’s the only way they’re getting to heaven. You have to obey the rules. That’s it. Otherwise God doesn’t care about you one way or another.
Misconception #2 goes right along with the first one. Here it is.
Misconception #2: The better I behave the more God will hear me and love me.
You know what I mean?
These people get the idea in their heads that God is sitting up in heaven just listening to prayers. One reaches his ears and he starts checking the list. Some of you are wondering what list. The LIST, with a capital L, a capital I, a capital S, and a capital T. You know, the one that tells God whether you’re doing everything just the right way or not.
Now when God finds the name on that list, he knows if he can listen. “Yep. Today I can hear you. If you would have dome to me a month ago, no deal. But you’ve been doing the right things lately.”
Now don’t you dare laugh, because there are an awful lot of people who this just like that. Some of them may be sitting in this very room today.
So where in the world did this idea come from? What makes us think that the better we act the more acceptable we are to God? What actually makes a person believe that we have to everything a certain way or we can’t make it?
You see, the problem is that this misconception is in no way unique to Christianity. The Muslims believe this. If I behave in certain ways, if I obey the rules, I will be more acceptable to Allah. The Hindus believe this idea too. If I behave in certain ways I will no longer go through reincarnation. I will become a part of the Brahman, that’s the Hindu version of god.
Now I’ve been putting a lot of thought into this question and I honestly believe there is nothing that keeps people away from God more than this idea. There isn’t one thing that keeps people from walking through the door of church than the belief that we have to live according to God’s rules before he will love us.
In fact I’ve been talking to people recently about this idea. Some of you may even be experiencing this very thought pattern in your own life right now. So you want to know what I discovered?
When I ask people, non-Christians, if they think they’re going to heaven I usually get the same response. They will often tell me, “Yes, I am.”
So I’ll ask them how they know.
“Well, I’m going because I’ve been a good person.”
And what makes you a good person?
“Well, I try to treat other people decently. I even keep the Ten Commandments.”
Wait! Now we’re getting somewhere. The Ten Commandments. Rules! God’s rules. If we obey them we’re accepted, right?
So I often ask people what the Ten Commandments are.
Most people can’t tell me all of them.
“Well, there’s Thou shall not murder. I’ve never done that.”
And that’s probably true. Until Jesus comes along and says if you even think about you’ve already done it.
“I can’t even think about it.”
Nope.
“Well, that’s OK. There’s the one that says, “You shall not steal.” I can’t say I’ve done a lot of that. I mean I’ve wandered out of a store or two with a pen but that’s not really stealing. Is it?”
It is if the pen doesn’t belong to you.
“Alright. Oh I know. There’s the one about not committing adultery. Now I know I’ve never done that.”
Ever thought about it?
“You mean I can’t think about that one either?”
Sorry.
It’s no wonder that most people think that they’re never going to be good enough for God. It’s no wonder that they truly believe they have to get their lives straightened our before God will love them.
Right now some of you are going, but Tim these are God’s rules. Yes. They are. And there are a whole lot more to them.
But that’s not how it works.
Turn with me over to Exodus Chapter 20.
Now those of you who got there first are looking at the header of this chapter. It most like reads, “The Ten Commandments,” right at the beginning of the chapter. And right now you’re thinking, “But these are the rules!”
Instead of thinking like that, I want you to use your imaginations. Moses is up on top of Mount Sinai and the nation of Israel is waiting for him at the bottom of the mountain. The earth is shaking and rumbling. God tells Moses, “Get out your hammer and chisel. Now see those two rocks over there? I need you to take some notes.”
Now that isn’t really what occurred. Keep in mind we’re using our imaginations here.
So beginning in verse one, let’s read.
“And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God…”
Now personally I can see Moses interrupting right here. “Wait a minute. Did you just say, “The Lord your God?””
“Yes. I did.”
“As in you are our God?”
“I am the Lord your God…”
“Wait. As in you are my God?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“Not really. You do realize we’re just slaves.”
“Moses listen. I am the Lord your God.”
“But God that makes it personal. This would mean that you have a relationship with us.”
“Exactly.”
The truth of the matter is this whole idea of God being a personal God would have been a difficult thing for any member of the nation of Israel to get into their minds. All they’ve known for generations is slavery. That’s it. They been living in Egypt, doing exactly what they have been told to do, knowing that if they didn’t their lives could be taken from them for any reason. Sure. They probably still remembered the stories of how God had spoken with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob. But all that was a long time ago. Now there is only slavery and a God who has just begun to speak to them.
So right now, in this moment, Moses has to be questioning.
“Lord, how can you possibly say that you’re our God? How can you say you are my personal God? We don’t know the rules yet. You haven’t given them to us. How can you use the words “your God?””
The best way for me to explain this is be asking you a question. How many of you, when you got married, knew everything about your spouse? You knew how much salt they liked on their French fries? You knew what type of movies they liked to watch? You knew which pieces of chicken were their favorite? You knew the exact way they wanted their socks folded?
I’m asking because silly things like this can lead to big arguments. But we set up rules just like those for ourselves. We have these personal ways we like to do things. Then as you grow as a couple you establish new rules.
The same thing is true here. All of a sudden God has chosen a people and the people don’t know the rules. They have no idea what to expect.
And so God begins again, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”
And he begins to remind Moses of how far he has come with the nation of Israel. Exodus. But I want to look real quick at Exodus Chapter 12. Now I’m not going to read all of this to you. I’m going to summarize this, and most of the earlier chapters of Exodus. But when you get a chance go back and read this. This is incredible stuff.
You see God sent Moses and his brother, Aaron, to the king of Egypt. Their primary focus was to convince the pharaoh to let the Israelites go. Only pharaoh doesn’t listen. The Bible says that God hardened pharaoh’s heart. Of course he’s not going to listen. These people are his whole economy. They plow the fields, they build the cities, and they carve the monuments. The best part of it is the people of Israel do it for nothing. They’re not paid for their work. They’re slaves. There is no way he’s letting them just walk away.
So God begins to make a mockery of the Egyptian gods. It’s like he say, “Fine. You want to worship the Nile. You think it’s the foundation of all life.” Then he turns the river to blood. “You want to worship the sun. You think your king is the son of that god.” And he blacked it out of the sky. “You want to worship frogs. I will give you frogs. You want to worship locusts. I’ll give you locusts.”
The nation of Israel sees all of this. They know what’s going on.
And finally God has enough. He calls Moses and Aaron and he tells them to tell the people to kill a lamb, to eat it, and to use the lamb’s blood to paint the edge around the door so that the spirit of God will pass by that house and no one inside will be harmed. The Israelites call it Passover. I know this is simplifying the story. There are a lot of details here. This was to be done in a certain way.
Now imagine with me the insanity of this. No one you know has ever heard directly from God. You seen these incredible and frankly frightening miracles. Then God speaks to you for the first time and he tells you to eat a meal together and paint your door with blood. If that happened today, I’m not completely sure I would have been doing it. This is all too strange. But the people of Israel do exactly what they’re told to do.
Then God takes it a step farther. He establishes an anniversary. It’s there is Exodus 12:14. “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord – a lasting ordinance.”
Now guys, let’s be honest here. How many of you have ever forgotten your anniversary?
I’ll stick my hand in the air on this one. I k now it’s in May. I know it’s either the 30th or the 31st. Hopefully I get it right every year but somehow I manage not to on a regular basis.
God is doing the same thing here. He’s saying these people are mine. He’s got a relationship with them.
Now let me ask you all another question. When did your spouse become your husband or wife? Did it happen because you moved into the same house with each other? Is that when it occurred?
If that’s the case, if all it takes is moving into a house together, I know a sure fire way to tick your spouse off. It would work something like this.
I’m sitting at home, by myself, one afternoon when you call and ask for my wife. But she’s not in the house. So I tell you, “Nope. I’m not married.” Now you may have just talked to Storm at Ten O’clock that morning and we were married then, so you’re wondering what’s going on. So I have to explain it to you. “If she’s in the house we’re married. If she’s not in the house, we aren’t.” After all, that how it works right?
No! It’s not. Storm and I stood in gazebo in a park in Rochester, New Hampshire, with a Justice of the Peace, who was also a DJ and was dressed in Bermuda short, a tank top, and sandals. She said, “I do.” I said, “I do.” Katy danced in circles around us. He signed some paperwork and we were officially married. We had a relationship. We didn’t know all the rules yet. We still don’t know all the rules. But we began with a relationship.
That’s how it works with God. He begins with a relationship. The rules follow the relationship.
The rules can never establish the relationship. They are a confirmation that there is a relationship.
Roughly 1400 years later Jesus gathered his disciples in an upper room in Jerusalem. They were celebrating the Passover. They were there because it was the anniversary that God hade established centuries before. It was the confirmation of the relationship God had with the people of Israel.
Only Jesus was about to change everything. He had built a relationship with the twelve men gathered around them. Over the past three years he’d built friendships, he’d shown them how he acted, and he taught each one.
Now he makes a new rule. He takes the bread, that had represented the bread the Israelites had eaten as they fled Egypt, and he broke it. He told his disciples, “This bread is my body. It’s broken just for you. Take it. Eat it. Each time you do, do so in remembrance of me.” Then he took the cup, to the Jews it represented the blood of the lambs they had used to paint their doorsills with. He said to them, “This cup is blood, spilled just for you. Take it. Drink it. Each time you do remember me.”
The rules still matter 2000 years later. But they aren’t a way to get to heaven. It doesn’t work that way. You will never be able to earn your way their with your good deeds. You will never be good enough for God to notice you. The truth is there is only one way. That’s to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. There’s no other way.
Maybe some of you are still trying to get all the rules right. You think that’s the way you’re going to heaven. You know about the commandments and you’re trying to do them all right.
The rules aren’t a way to heaven. They don’t come before a relationship. They won’t get you any closer to God or get him to listen to you more. They’re a confirmation of a relationship with his son. They’re a confirmation of a relationship with Jesus.
Do you have that today? Or are you still trying to get your life straightened out?
** I’d like to thank Andy Stanley for his sermon about the same topic and opening my eyes to this passage of scripture.
