TOO HUNGRY FOR WORDS
Matt 7: 21-23 (p 686) September 11, 2011
INTRODUCTION:
One of the consequences of having three stents put in your heart and being diabetic is your diet is going to change. In fact it’s not a diet. It really does become a life style where you’re trying to figure out how many carbs. Am I having the right portions of proteins, veggies, and fruit? But even though I think I’m doing a pretty good job I’ve noticed something about myself--I’m hungry all the time.
The portions never seem to quite satisfy my desire. After I’ve eaten breakfast (cheerios and a banana) I start thinking about lunch. And after lunch I start thinking about dinner. I’m hungry all the time.
But as you can tell I’m not starving to death. I’m hungry. I’m not dying because I’m not getting enough to eat. I’m not one of the 26m children who will die today in the world because of starvation.
[I remember on one trip to Haiti when I was younger fixing beans with an egg on top of it for hundreds of children who came down from the mountains. Many of them ate the beans but wrapped the egg up in a leaf. I looked at Paul & Rachael Ronle, the missionaries, and they said, ‘It’s all they’ll have today. Some take the egg back for little brothers or sisters or to eat later.”]
I think spiritually we in American are much like eating what I want when I want it, and as much of it as I want. We’ve got a smorgasbord of spiritual platters. We can choose the type of worship we want, we hunger for things that meet our wants and when we don’t get exactly what we want when we want it we complain about how hungry we are.
But the world outside America is different. They aren’t just hungry for spiritual food. They are starving to death outside of Christ. They don’t just hunger. They are starving for the word of God. They are too hungry for words.
David Platt in his book “Radical” describes an Asian Underground church…
“Just imagine going to worship gathering in one of those house churches. Not an all-day training in the Word. Just a normal three-hour worship service late in the evening. The Asian believer who is taking you gives you the instructions. “Put on dark pants and a jacket with a hood on it. We will put you in the back of our car and drive you into the village. Please keep your hood on and your face down.”
When you arrive in the village under the cover of night, another Asian believer meets you at the door of the car. “Follow me,” he says.
With your hood over your head, you crawl out of the car, keeping your face toward the ground. You begin to walk with your eyes fixed on the feet of the man in front of you as he leads you down a long and winding path with a small flashlight. You hear more and more footsteps around you as you progress down the trail. Then finally you round the corner and walk into a small room.
Despite its size, sixty believers have crammed into it. They are all ages, from precious little girls to seventy-year-old men. They are sitting either on the floor or on small stools, lined shoulder to shoulder, huddled together with their Bibles in their laps. The roof is low, and one light bulb dangles from the middle of the ceiling as the sole source of illumination. No sound system. No band. No guitar. No entertainment. No cushioned chairs. No heated or air-conditioned building. Nothing but the people of God and the Word of God. And strangely, that’s enough.
God’s Word is enough for millions of believers who gather in house churches just like this one. His Word is enough for millions of other believers who huddle in African jungles, South American rain forests, and Middle Eastern cities. But is his Word enough for us?
That’s an important question…maybe the important question.
I IS GOD’S WORD WHAT BRINGS US TOGETHER?
What would happen if we stripped away the cool music (both traditional and contemporary), the cushioned chairs? What if the HD TVs are gone and all the fancy sound stuff? What if the A/C is turned off and all the comforts removed? Would God’s Word still be enough for His people to come together? Are we still a people who are hungry for the revelation of God? I know we love to see our friends. I know we bring our kids to café and to Jr. Worship. But the question still remains: If you took everything else away, is God’s Word the reason His people at Fern Creek Christian come together? Is it what we hunger for like a starving man hungers for a meal?
You see if it’s not the word of God that brings us together it’s something else. Something selfish and self-centered. And it won’t be God at the center. It won’t be His people submitted to His will and His purpose. It will be a people worshipping themselves and pretending it’s about Him.
Why is it so essential that God’s Word is at the center and it’s creating a hunger to have more? Making us long for it, study it, memorize it and follow it. What causes followers of Christ around the world to literally risk their lives in order to know it?
II God’s Word Shows us Who He Really Is
“Fundamentally the gospel is the revelation of who God is, who we are, and how we can be reconciled to him. Yes in the American dream, when self reigns supreme we have a dangerous tendency to misunderstand, minimize and manipulate the gospel in order to accommodate our assumptions and desires.” (David Platt)
God’s word reveals he is the sovereign creator of all things. He knows everything, sustains everything, owns everything. He is holy above all. He is righteous in all His ways, just in all His wrath and loving toward all He made.
God is not only a loving father, but also a wrathful judge. He hates sin. Habakkuk prayed to God, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” (Hab 1:13).
The Gospel reveals eternal truths about God we would sometimes rather ignore, and do. We would much rather picture God as a father who might help us, but ignore God as a judge who might damn us.
Maybe we’re afraid if we really take a good hard look at God in His word we’d see “A God that hates sin, and hate sinners.” Whoa, wait a minute. God hates sin but loves the sinner, right? Well, not according to the Bible.
Psalm 5:5 says, “The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong.” Fourteen times in the first 50 Psalms we see similar descriptions of God’s hatred toward sinners, his wrath toward liars. In John’s gospel at the same place we find one of the most famous verses of God’s love. We also find one of the most neglected verses concerning His wrath. (John 3:16-36)
God’s word teaches us some truths about Him we’d rather ignore. Maybe this is why we fill our lives with distracting stuff in our culture and in our churches because we are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in His Word we might discover He evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give Him.
So instead of worship we give Him a song.
But that’s the very point. We’re not ready to give God what He asks for because our hearts are set against Him. God’s revelation in the gospel not only reveals who he is, but it also reveals…
III God’s Word Reveals Who We Really Are
An old preaching professor used to take his students to a graveyard at the beginning of every new semester. As they overlooked scores of headstones he would ask his students in all sincerity to speak out to the graves and call people in the ground to get up, rise and live. With some embarrassment and a chuckle or two each student would try it. Of course they all failed. The professor would then look at his students and remind them of a core truth in the gospel: People are spiritually dead. Just as those corpses in the ground are physically dead and only words from God can bring them to life.”
This is the reality of who we are. Every one of us is born with an evil, God-hating heart. Genesis 8:21 tells us that every inclination of man’s heart is evil from childhood. Jesus tells us in Luke 11:13 that we know that we are evil.
And in our lives we rebel against God. We take the law of God written in His Word and in our heart and we disobey it. We refute our creator’s authority over us. Just as Adam and Eve did in Genesis chapter 3.
Each of us looks at the one who scooped out the oceans, piled up the mountains and hung the sun, moon and stars in place. We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, “No.” That’s our nature in regard to all authority. It’s our fallen, sinful, rebellious nature that says no to our parents, our teachers, our laws and even God. Why did I turn away from loving parents? Why did I reject their foundation and rules? Why did I pursue evil? It is my nature to do so. The anarchy flag flies in every single human heart.
The modern day gospel says, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” Follow these steps and you can be saved.” But the Biblical gospel says, “You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, and in your present state of rebellion you are not able even to see that you need life, much less cause yourself to come to life. Spiritually we are dead and burned.”
Therefore, you and I are radically dependent on God to do something in our lives that we could never do. The gospel-the real gospel-reveals the depth of our need for Him. He shows us that there is absolutely nothing we can do to come to him. We can’t manufacture salvation. We can’t program or produce it. We can’t even imitate it. God has to open our eyes, set us free, overcome our will and appease His wrath. He has to come to us. This is the beauty of the gospel.
David Platt tells this story:
**this is where the part of the “Radical” book that I scanned and emailed you will go***
This is the gospel. God, the one we hate and rebel against, came down from the mountain to die on a cross. Why? Jesus drank the full cup of God’s wrath. He paid it all.
One preacher described it as if you and I were standing 100 yards in front of a dam of water 10,000 miles high and 10,000 miles wide-and then all of a sudden that dam burst and the water rushed at us. Right before it reached our feet the ground in front of us opened and swallowed it all. At the cross Christ drank the full cup of God’s wrath. He downed every last drop of this cup and said, “It is finished.”
And it really matters whether we’ve accepted His payment. It really matters what my response to this sacrifice is! Surely this gospel calls me to unconditional surrender. “Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord” will enter the kingdom of Heaven but only he who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord did we not prophesy in your name? And in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me you evil doers.”
Jesus was not speaking to atheists or agnostics here. He is speaking to devoutly religious people who have deluded themselves into thinking they were on the narrow road, while all along they were on the broad road to hell. According to Jesus, one day there will be many people, not just a few, eternally shocked to find out that they weren’t in the kingdom of God at all.
You cannot be hungry for Jesus and the world at the same time. Today I would ask you to become radically passionate about knowing God…He reveals himself through His word.
