[I’ve taken some pointers in this sermon from Chapter 5 ’Drifting Away from God’ in Joseph Stowell’s book RADICAL RELIANCE.]
You see, God did not hide from us. Man was the first to hide from God.
• Man did not seek God. It was God who first sought man out.
DRIFTING AWAY
Tom cannot swim but enjoys going to the beach. On one of these trips, he was lying on a float floating just offshore. He closed his eyes, basking in the warm sun and enjoying the sounds of the waves.
When he opened his eyes, to his shock the shore was very far away then it had been before. He hopped off the float to get back, only to realise that he couldn’t touch the ground.
He panicked and scrambled back onto the float. No one else was in the waters nearby. His friends on the beach were yelling and having fun, and couldn’t hear his shouts for help. He has no choice but to hang on and inch his way toward shore bit by bit with each wave. His progress was slow and scary but he made it.
Drifting has a few characteristics.
• It happens gradually, almost insusceptible. You don’t feel it.
• It is not drastic. It does not happen overnight.
• And when you come to know it, you realise it has been there for some time.
Drifting away is always subtle. You don’t know it is taking place.
• One day, you wake up only to realise that you are far from where you should be.
• What is it that sets us adrift from God?
We want to look at Adam and Eve in Genesis and get some answers.
• They started off with the most intimate relationship with God.
• They were in the most ideal setting, with the Lord in the Garden of Eden, and commune with Him directly.
• So what changed that?
(1) Doubting God’s Good Intentions
When Satan wanted to break the bond of intimacy between man and God, he did not try to deny the existence of God.
• Adam and Eve had too much personal contact with the Lord for that to work.
• Instead, Satan started where he usually starts – by driving a wedge between Eve and her trust in God.
• She would not have fallen for the fruit, unless Satan could get her to doubt that God was good.
• Satan got her to question whether God had her best intentions in mind when He restricted her from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The best way to destroy a relationship is to drive a wedge of distrust.
• We see that often on TV in serial shows. Someone comes in and talks bad about the other person, and very soon misunderstanding sets in and the relationship turns sour.
• Distrust destroys relationship. We all experience that, in friendship or in marriages. We misread one another’s moves.
Satan breaks our trust in God by getting us to interpret God – His character, His words – in non-truthful ways.
• Eve believed Satan’s interpretation of God and His words.
• By the time she abandoned God for the supposed benefits of eating the fruit, nothing about God had changed.
All that had changed was her interpretation of God, the interpretation of the words she had previously obeyed with gladness.
• The generous God who had given her and Adam everything in the garden, except one tree, is now seen as stingy and restrictive.
• The God who had given her all things is now seen as keeping something from her that would bring her satisfaction.
• Worse, Satan suggested, God was selfishly preventing her from having the ‘best’ - sharing in His great power and knowledge.
Once we suspect God, we begin to move away from Him, emotionally.
• It is the same in human relationships. Once you suspect that your friend is betraying you, or your spouse is unfaithful, you are moving apart (not always physically initially, but emotionally, mentally.)
• Satan is good at making such suggestions, and putting these deceitful twists in our minds. Jesus says he is the father of lies (John 8:44).
Here are some common thoughts we have:
• God has been good to others but not as good to me. He has denied me some things I expected.
• God is somehow to blame for the mishaps I see around.
• I have been good, but God has not been treating me fairly.
• God is demanding, unduly restrictive and indifferent to my situation.
Every time a crisis happens, your interpretation of God is being challenged.
• You are urged to interpret God’s moves; you want to read His intentions.
• And if you do not know Him well enough, you are open to misinterpretation. You misread His moves and you misunderstand His intentions.
JOB’S EXPERIENCE
A classic example of this tension between our experience and our view of God is found in Job. Look at the interchange between Job and his wife –
• Both of them had plenty of reason to see life from Satan’s point of view.
• Job’s children were dead, his fortune was gone, and his health was destroyed.
• His wife, whose heart had been turned against God by the tragedy, asked him, “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9).
Job’s perspective? “Though He slays me, I will hope in Him” (13:15).
• Same circumstances, but two perspectives – very different perspectives.
• Job had an intimate connection with God (he was a righteous man) that could not be broken by life’s circumstances, no matter how wrenching.
• The tougher life got, the more he felt he needed God.
• One author Peter Kreeft puts it very well: “In God, Job has everything even though he has nothing.”
Habbakuk says “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.” (Hab 3:17-18)
We can defend ourselves against the pressure to abandon God by remembering a few things:
• Satan is our enemy and he is always working to destroy us by alienating us from God. Since the beginning, he has not stopped planting thoughts – false thoughts – about God and His intentions for our lives. Don’t fall for his traps.
• Romans 8:28 says all things work together for good. If we believe God is Almighty and in control, then He is permitting negative events in our lives for a good purpose, and in time He will turn them around for His glory. John 9:1-3 As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.
• God’s laws and principles are good. They are meant to keep us from harm and direct us in ways that will bring lasting rewards and blessings.
Cultivate this unwavering trust in God.
2. Believing We Need Something More to be Happy
Gen 3:4-5 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Satan suggests, God is hiding something from you. He is not telling you everything.
• If you remain loyal to God, your life will be less than it should be.
• God is restricting you have being the best you can be. Your life could be richer, more satisfying, and more complete if you are not bound by these rules.
Sound very familiar. God is always restricting us. There is more fun out there.
• Satan is like an auctioneer, urging us to buy his products and see its value.
• But each time we buy it, we lose. We lose the peace of mind, a clean conscience and our closeness with God.
• What Eve and Adam got wasn’t happiness and fulfilment, but guilt, shame and fear!
Satan will use this wedge to separate us from God, telling you ‘God has not given you enough; you have to get it yourself.’
• Don’t pity yourself. Don’t feel short-changed by God – “I deserve this but God did not give it to me!”
• Don’t fall for Satan’s trap.
Learn from Moses. Heb 11:24-28
By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw Him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.
Staying in Egypt will mean Moses will be keeping his status, fame, privileges and wealth.
• But he has chosen to obey God and held on to that which is eternal.
We all have our own ‘Egypt’ in our lives. You have to figure out what that is.
• Ask God grant us the wisdom to make the right choices. It pays to obey God.
• Joseph Stowell says, “We will never decrease the distance we have allowed to develop between God and ourselves until we firmly and finally believe that God will ultimately and finally provide for our needs in His way and His time.”
How do you view God today? Will that view stay so clear for the rest of your life? I hope so.
Max Lucado wrote ‘In the Eye of the Storm’, p. 105-107.
There is a window in your heart through which you can see God. Once upon a time that window was clear. Your view of God was crisp. You could see God as vividly as you could see a gentle valley or hillside. The glass was clean, the pane unbroken.
You knew God. You knew how he worked. You knew what he wanted you to do. No surprises. Nothing unexpected. You knew that God had a will, and you continually discovered what it was.
Then, suddenly, the window cracked. A pebble broke the window. A pebble of pain.
Perhaps the stone struck when you were a child and a parent left home - forever. Maybe the rock hit in adolescence when your heart was broken. Maybe you made it into adulthood before the window was cracked. But then the pebble came.
Whatever the pebble’s form [your disappointment], the result was the same - a shattered window. The pebble missiled into the pane and shattered it. The crash echoed down the halls of your heart. Cracks shot out from the point of impact, creating a spider web of fragmented pieces.
And suddenly God was not so easy to see. The view that had been so crisp had changed. You turned to see God, and his figure was distorted. It was hard to see him through the pain. It was hard to see him through the fragments of hurt.
You were puzzled. God wouldn’t allow something like this to happen, would he? Tragedy and travesty weren’t on the agenda of the One you had seen, were they? Had you been fooled? Had you been blind?
Most of us have a way of completing this sentence: "If God is God, then..." Call it an agenda, a divine job description. Each of us has an unspoken, yet definitive, expectation of what God should do. "If God is God, then..."
...There will be no financial collapse in my family. My children will never be buried before me. People will treat me fairly. This church will never divide. My prayer will be answered.
These are not articulated criteria. They are not written down or notarized. But they are real. They define the expectations we have of God. And when pain comes into our world - "when the careening [flying] pebble splinters the window of our hearts" - these expectations go unmet and doubts may begin to surface.
We look for God, but can’t find him. Fragmented glass hinders our vision. He is enlarged through this piece and reduced through that one. Lines jigsaw their way across His face. Large sections of shattered glass opaque the view.
And now you aren’t quite sure what you see.
This is real but let me say this – the God behind the window has not changed.
Your circumstances may have but He has not. Trust Him.
• God knows what He is doing. Never interpret God with the lenses of your experience and circumstance.
• You are going to get a distorted and wrong view of God.
