Martin Luther spent a major portion of his life looking
for a God who liked him. He was devoutly religious from
his childhood, but religion was more a burden than a
blessing, for his God was not his friend. He knew God
hated sin and demanded perfection and so he was
obsessed with trying to be perfect. As a monk he went
beyond the rigorous rules of the monastery. He fasted
and prayed longer than any of the others. He denied
himself the normal allotment of blankets and almost froze
to death. He punished his body and devoted every ounce
of energy to being super-spiritual.
He once wrote, "I was a good monk, and I kept the rule
of my order so strictly that I may say that if ever monk
got to heaven by his monkery it was I. All my brothers in
the monastery who knew me will bear me out. If I had
kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils,
prayers, reading, and other work." Suicide by
super-spiritually was the direction he was heading. It
sounds like such deep devotion, but in reality it was all
based on fear. God was not a father he loved and a friend
he served. God was a tyrant he feared.
Luther was so obsessed with his sin that he made his
confessor a nervous wreck. Others would confess their sin
in a few minutes, but he would stay for hours, and once
even stayed for six hours confessing the sin of the previous
day. On and on he went for everything he did was a sin in
his eyes. He even confessed that he stayed up after the
lights were to be out to read his Bible by candlelight. That
was one of his sins. Staupitz, the leader of the monastery,
finally got fed up with Luther and in anger said, "Look
here, if you expect Christ to forgive you come in with
something to forgive-parricide,blasphemy,adultery,instead
of all these peccadilloes. Man, God is not angry with you, you are
angry with God."
When the truth finally sunk into Luther's head and
heart, and he saw that he was the problem, he found the
greatest treasure a man can find-he found God was his
friend. He was a loving Father who provided for us what
we needed in order to be forgiven. We do not have to
earn our salvation, but freely receive it as His gift of love.
When Luther stopped working to save himself, and took
salvation as a free gift from God by faith in Christ, he
made a lot of new friends, but the greatest of them all was
God. He found a God who liked him. Luther was losing
friendship on both the earthly and heavenly level because
he was blind to the fact that he was the problem. When
we are full of misconceptions and misunderstandings, we
are in bondage, and only the truth can set us free.
A prominent American writer read the book Forgive
Us Our Trespasses by Lloyd C. Douglas. She wrote to the
author and said, "As I read your book I saw myself as I
really was. I finished it late at night and the next day I
went out and recaptured five friendships I had lost because
of my unforgiving spirit." The truth had set her
free. The fact is, most of the broken relationships in life,
and the loss of friendship with men and God, are based on
our false conceptions. Like Luther, we are often angry
with God and with others, and we misinterpret this as
their anger with us. If you examine most of the conflicts
you have in marriage or with children and others, you will
see they usually start with your rotten inner mood at
someone else's behavior. We create God and others in our
own image when we are full of hostility and we blame
them for being what we are.
The ancient world is full of myths that portray God as
the foe of man. Zeus, the king of gods in Greek mythology
was so portrayed. Prometheus was a god who took pity
on man and tried to warm and cheer his life by giving him
the gift of fire. Zeus became very angry because of this
grace and love expressed by Prometheus. He had him
chained to a rock in the Adriatic Sea. He was tortured
with the heat and thirst of the day and the cold of the
night. And then for an added touch of sadistic pleasure he
prepared a vulture to tear out his liver. Zeus was very
creative in his bitterness. He made it so the liver would
keep growing back so the vulture could tear it out over
and over again. This was the picture of God that many
people had, and, of course, the only reaction to such a
tyrant is rebellion and hostility.
When I read the writing of famous atheists like Robert
Ingersal, I see this anger at God. He is so mad at God that
the blames God for all that is awful and evil in life, and this
justifies his anger. You have a right to be angry at a God
who is responsible for all that is evil. Believers sometimes
fall into this same trap. They start with a false view of
God and His relationship to a world of evil. It looks to
them like God does not care about them and they are
angry. This is where we see the elder son in the parable of
the prodigal. He is mad at his father and his anger blinds
him to the fact that he is the problem. Instead he tries to
justify his anger by making the father look like the
culprit, and the cause for his hostility.
The first thing we see here is that it is not enough to
know that God is our Father to have a right relationship
to Him. The elder brother had no doubt about the
fatherhood of his father, but he did doubt the friendship
of his father. In other words, being a father does not
guarantee that one is a friend. The world is full of fathers
who are not friends. Knowing that God is a father does
not help many people who have fathers who abuse them,
reject them, and refuse to give them love and attention.
Jay Kessler, for years the president of Youth For
Christ, says the idea of the fatherhood of God is not
adequate to appeal to a generation of kids who have been
rejected by their fathers. He says imagine what it is like
to a child who has been abused ,beaten, scorned, and
rejected by a father to be told by Christians that now
what we have is an even bigger and stronger one of these
for you to get to know. Is it any wonder that they would say,
no thank you? God as father is not always the
greatest truth to reach people.
The elder brother did not need to know that his father
was his father. He needed to know that truth which the
younger son discovered, and that was that his father was
his friend. In his anger the elder brother felt like his
father was his foe. The younger son felt the same way
earlier. He felt he had to get away on his own to
experience the best of life. He felt that his real friends
were somewhere out there in the world waiting to be
found. It was not until he had lost all and had hit bottom
that he came home to discover that his father was his
greatest friend. This is what Luther had to discover about
God, and this is what all men have to discover about God.
Joshua Liebman wrote-
In this vast universe
There is but one supreme truth--
That God is our friend!
By that truth meaning is given
To the remote stars, the numberless centuries,
The long and heroic struggle of mankind-....
O my Soul, dare to trust this truth!
Dare to rest in God's kindly arms,
Dare to look confidently into His face,
Then launch thyself into life unafraid!
Knowing thou art within thy Father's house,
That thou art surrounded by His love,
Thou wilt become master of fear, Lord of life, conqueror even
of death! If this be the peak of truth, and there is abundant of
evidence to support it, then, like all other peaks, it is not
arrived at with a step, but is a hard climb. And like any
other climb, there are hindrances and helps. If we are to
know God as our friend, we have to be aware of the
hindrances to be overcome, and of the helps to aid us in
arriving at this pinnacle of truth. We cannot cover them
all, but I think the greatest hindrance and the greatest
help can be seen clearly in this Parable of the Prodigal.
I. THE GREATEST HINDRANCE.
The greatest hindrance to believing God is our friend is
God's permissiveness. God as represented by the
prodigal's father let him take his share of the estate and
set off for the far country. This is one of man's major
problems with God. God does not run a very tight ship.
He let's men do the most foolish and stupid things, and it
fill the world with evil. If God was not so permissive, the
world would not be in such a mess, and so it is basically
God's fault. The father could have said no, but he let his
son go off and make a fool of himself. Sure he would have
hated his father had he not let him go, but it would have
been for his own good. But he just let him go his own way
to do his own thing.
Men came to Jesus in Luke 13 and told Him about the
Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices,
and about the 18 on whom the Tower of Siloam
fell. The question in their minds was, why did God permit
these tragedies? The popular answer, in the tradition of
Job's friends, was that these people must have been worse
sinners than others, and so deserved this judgment. Jesus
rejected this answer and said they were not worse sinners,
and that unless they repented they would all perish. Jesus
made it clear that God permits good things to happen to
bad people as the sun shines on evil as well as the good,
and the rain falls on the unjust as well as the just. God
also permits bad things to happen to good people. All of
the Apostles died violent deaths, and so suffering and
tragedy does not mean at all that God is judging someone
for their sin.
Jesus rejected the concept of God as the judge, jury,
and executioner who stands ready to exact his pound of
flesh like a Shylock eager for revenge. Jesus portrays a
God who is temporarily tolerant of evil. He is the father
of the prodigal who tolerates and permits him to do what
is almost certain folly. He is the sower who sows good
seed in the field, and then permits the enemy to sow weeds
in his field, and then permits the weeds to grow with the
good seed until harvest. The critics of God do not go for
all this permissiveness. This, to them, is only proof that
God has his priorities out of order. Instead of wasting his
time in the trivial business of counting the hairs on our
heads and noting the sparrows that fall, God should be
preventing all that His permissiveness allows. He should
be stopping falling towers and weed sowing, and stubborn
sons from going off half cocked with the family savings.
God should be more repressive and not so permissive is
a basic human criticism of God's governing of the world.
None of us can escape this obstacle to our faith in God as a
friend. We live in a world where evil is no longer hidden.
The tyrants who keep masses of people imprisoned and
oppressed are on the front page, and we wonder how God
can permit such evil men to have such power. Why does
God permit the drug trafficker to ruin millions of lives?
Why does God permit so many dens of iniquity that rob
the world of justice and righteousness? The world is full
of people angry at God for allowing so much evil, and it
puts a strain on our conviction that God is really a caring
friend.
The number one cause for Christians getting angry at
God is His permissiveness. Isobel Kuhn and her family
were missionaries in China when World War II broke out.
Her children had to be sent away to school, and her
husband was off to gather remnants of his scattered
people. In her loneliness she vented her anger on God. "I
am a family person-I need my family," she railed at God.
Her anger was destroying her health and her relationship
with God, and she came to realize the folly of blaming
God for the folly of men. She was reconciled to God and
regained her peace, but the point is, God permissiveness
was a great hindrance to her conviction that God was her
friend. Soren Kierkegaard was right when he said, "God is
our greatest anxiety." When we do not understand Him,
we do not understand ourselves or others, and we are in a
wrong relationship to everyone. The villain of the parable
of the prodigal is the elder brother. He did not
understand the father's permissiveness. He not only
permitted the younger brother to take off with his share of
the estate and blow it, he permitted him to come home
again with dignity, and he even threw a party for him.
The elder brother was so full of anger at the fathers
permissiveness that it was destroying his relationship to
everyone he once loved.
I have a hunch a large proportion of broken
relationships can be traced back to this kind of hostility
toward God. The inability to grasp and cope with God's
permissiveness leads to the breakdown of all relationships.
Harold Kushner is the Jewish Rabbi of a congregation of
2500 people. He has become famous in America for his
book When Bad Things Happen To Good People. He
wrote the book because his 3 year old son Aaron
developed that rare disease progeria. It makes the child
age rapidly. He died of old age 2 days after his 14th
birthday. He never got to live as a child, but only as an old
man. He and his wife went through the battle of anger at
God for permitting such a thing, but he came to a wiser
conclusion than the elder brother. He wrote-
I no longer hold God responsible for illnesses,
accidents, and natural disasters, because I
realize that I gain little and I lose so much
when I blame God for those things. I can
worship a God who hates suffering but
cannot eliminate it, more easily than I can
worship a God who chooses to make children
suffer and die, for whatever exalted reason.
Some years ago, when the "Death of God"
theology was a fad, I remember seeing a
bumper sticker that read "My God is not
dead; sorry about yours." I guess my
bumper reads "My God is not cruel; sorry
about yours."
We could go on for hours showing that God's
permissiveness is the greatest hindrance to our believing
he is our friend, but we need to move on to find a solution,
and so we want to look at the second point which is-
II. THE GREATEST HELP.
The greatest help to believing God is our friend is
God's permissiveness. Needless to say, but I'll say it
anyway, we are dealing here with a paradox; a two point
sermon with one point, which is the paradox of
permissiveness. I'll admit that the second point sounds
like a rerun of the first, but let me assure you that the
same thing can be seen from a radically different
perspective. This which can make men so angry at God
can also be our greatest assurance that He is our friend.
Ordinarily the cause and the cure of a problem are two
different things, but this is not an absolute necessity.
Vaccination is an illustration of how the cause of a disease
can also be a cure. The virus that causes the disease is
actually put into the body in a controlled form so the body
can develop an immunity to it. It is a paradox, but
nevertheless true, the cause and the cure are the same
thing. So it is with the permissiveness of God. It is the
cause of a great deal of doubt about God's love for man.
It is bad enough that He permits the prodigal to live in sin,
but this is mild compared to what else is permitted.
The prodigal's sins were sins of pleasure, and he did
not leave a trail of blood behind him as have the tyrants of
the world. How God can permit the Herods and Hitlers of
history to stay on the stage for even a few years is cause
for great agony of soul. But lets look at the other side of
the coin of permissiveness. We all have the same options
as they did. We are as free to abuse God's gift of freedom
as they were. We can choose to be prodigals too, or we
can choose to learn from his folly and take the shortcut
right to the father's love, without the degrading detour
into the far country.
The very essence of what it means to be made in the
image of God is in our freedom to choose. To give this up
would be to become a computer of God rather than a
child of God. The prodigal's father permitted him to be a
sinner, but he also permitted him to come back home and
be a forgiven son. His permissiveness is not the problem.
It is what the son chose to do with it that is the problem.
The abuse of a precious gift is no reason to reject the
value of the gift. If I use the new Bible you give me to
start fires in the fireplace, does that make it a bad gift?
Not at all, and freedom is a wonderful gift
no matter how foolishly men use it. If you let your
children mix cool-aid on a painting of Rembrant, that is
no reflection on the value of Rembrant, but on your own
values and common sense.
The permissiveness of God is abused and misused, but
the fact is, it is still the greatest act of friendship God has
shown by giving us such freedom. If we were not free to
choose, we would not have been capable of being
redeemed. We could not chose to put our faith in Christ
and receive Him as God's gift. We would be things and
not persons. Christ would not have died for things.
Things cannot choose, but only those who were made in
God's image can choose, for they alone have the capacity
to see the value of God's permissiveness.
Yes you can abuse what God permits, but you can also
choose what God permits, which He also wills. He does
not will everything He permits. This would be nonsense
and meaningless, for it would be saying everything is the
will of God. All evil, sin, folly, and rebellion would be
God's will. All of this God permits, but none of it does He
will. The prodigal's father did not will any of the folly he
permitted him to do. And God does not will any of the
folly He permits us to do. The father also permitted the
prodigal to come home and to confess his folly, and to be
forgiven. He permits the prodigal to do everything that is
essential for reconciliation. He permits him to humble
himself, and pray, and to seek his father's face, and to
turn from his wicked ways. The tyrant forces you back.
He drags you home kicking and screaming to be his slave.
The father, as a friend, permits you to come home freely
as a son.
This permissiveness of God is the very essence of his
love and friendship, for he permits those who have
violated his holiness to come back into his presence, and
into his family, and to celebrate with him the victory over
all that the abuse of his permissiveness led to. If this does
not say to us God is our friend, then nothing will, for there
is no way to say it more loud and clear. God is our
Father, but that is not enough. The message is not
complete until we know too that God is our Friend. This
bright side of God's permissiveness is the basis for all the
songs of praise for life and for all that God has given us to
enjoy for time and eternity. The poet put it-
Lord, thank you
for setting me free.
Free to blow bubbles,
fly kites,
listen to seashells,
build castles in the sand,
wish on stars. Thank you
for setting me free.
Free to hunt for four-leaf clovers,
explore oak trees with inviting branches,
run laughing in the rain,
walk barefoot,
jump puddles,
wave at trains.
Thank you
for setting me free.
Free to yellow my nose in buttercups,
catch a firefly to see his light,
pick the first wild strawberry,
count the stars,
talk to ladybugs,
chase a thistle.
Thank you
for setting me free.
Free to see you in
sunlight dancing on the water,
dogwood smiling at the sky,
willows curtseying to the river,
azaleas flaming across the land,
rainbowed cobwebs,
drifting leaves.
Thank you
for setting me free.Free to play with,
wonder at
and love
all that you have given me.
And free, as well,
to give it back
to you.
Author unknown
We can hate what men do with God's permissiveness,
but we cannot help but love what it means for life when
we use it as He wills. If there was no positive side to the
Father's permissiveness, there would be no happy ending,
but because the door swings both ways, father and son
became great friends. It is God's permissiveness that
allows all sinners a second chance. He permits men to sin
and defy His law, but then He permits them the freedom
to repent and be forgiven. He made their freedom
possible by providing His own Son as a sacrifice for their
sin. Greater love has no man than this, that He lay down
His life for a friend. God in Christ became the greatest
friend of all, for He died for all.
God's permissiveness is why prayer is a universal
reality. If God did not permit His free creatures to have a
say in what happens in this world, prayer would be of no
value whatever. If God, by eternal decree, had already
determined every detail of history before history began,
then prayer is meaningless, for nothing can be other than
it is. Prayer can change nothing if this is so. But the Bible
makes it clear that God permits the prayers of men to
change things from what they might have been. Abraham
pleaded with God and God came down to ten righteous
men as the number for which He would have spared
Sodom. God listened to Abraham like a friend.
God said that in 40 days Ninevah would be destroyed.
But when the people repented and prayed to God, God
changed His mind and did not destroy them, but in mercy
spared them. Prayer not only changed things, it changed
God because He is a God who permits man to make a
difference. He permits man to be truly free. Abraham
Lincoln said, "As I would not be slave, so I would not be a
master." Is this more noble than God? Not at all, for
God will not be a tyrant who makes the will of man of no
account. He will respect their freedom to be fools, or to be
friends, and this is our greatest aid to knowing God as
our Friend.
The elder son chose to be a stubborn fool, but the fact
is, the father left the door wide open for him to still be a
friend. The door was just as open to him as it was for the
younger son. The father wanted him to join the party.
That is the way it is with God and all rebels. They are
welcome to join the party and be in on the joy of being
part of the family of God. Prayer is the exercise of
freedom. Prayer can change things; can change you; can
even change God. All men are free to pray and make a
difference in this world because of God's permissiveness.
God permissiveness leaves the door open for anyone to
come in to the party and discover God as their greatest
Friend.
