God’s Greatest Desire
Drawing Nearer (1)
AS YOU KNOW – tonight January 18th is the very first meeting of River Run’s Deeper Impact service… AND – let me tell you, I am pumped, stoked, excited, and jazzed about what God is going to do in our lives individually and collectively as we seek to go deeper BOTH with Him and in Him. UNDERSTAND – if I, if you, if we go deeper it WILL have an impact. THAT – is just the way God and His word are… NOW – I’ve chosen the following words from Isaiah 55 as the theme verse for this time of deeper impact…
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. "So you’ll go out in joy, you’ll be led into a whole and complete life. The mountains and hills will lead the parade, bursting with song. All the trees of the forest will join the procession, exuberant with applause.
– Isaiah 55:10-12
LISTEN – if you come hungry for God each Wednesday night… HIS WORD – will achieve it’s purpose in your life… AND – not only that but you will go out in joy and will be led (could you use some guidance) into a whole and complete life.
YOU KNOW – I take great comfort in knowing that the “success” of Deeper Impact does not and never will depend on me… BUT RATHER – on God’s powerful and unfailing word and the hunger of His people….
ARE YOU – hungry? ARE YOU – ready to go deeper? ARE YOU – ready for the King of kings and His truth to have a greater impact in your life?
Prayer…
AS – Mike said last Sunday for the first 11 weeks of Deeper Impact we are going to do a series of lessons that I am calling, “Drawing Nearer…” UNDERSTAND – our greatest need, is not to have;
• That sickness healed
• That relationship mended
• Those anxieties lifted
• Those financial burdens removed
• That confusion cleared up
• OR even that addiction over come
NO – our greatest need is to be closer to our amazing Father in heaven. THERE – are 2 theme verses for this series… James 4:8 and Jeremiah 29:13,14
“Come near to God and He will come near to you…” - James 4:8
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your. I will be found by you” declares the Lord… - Jeremiah 29:13,14
TONIGHT – I just want to lay the foundation for this study of drawing nearer to God… AS – you can see from your notes the title for our talk tonight, is ‘God’s Greatest Desire…”
3,000 years ago King David put these awesome words on paper… LISTEN – to them. IF – you know them, hear them again for the first time.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.
- Psalm 19:1-6
LET – those words sink in for a moment…
NOW ANOTHER – great passage about the glory of God is found in the 40th chapter of Isaiah. UNDERSTAND – Isaiah is writing to a people who for years had watched powerful empires like Assyria and Babylon reek havoc in their nation. Burning and destroying cities… Killing thousands, taking thousands more off into exile… TO – God’s people those nations (those problems) must have seemed so huge and powerful – and they must in turn must have felt so small…
Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.
“To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?" says the Holy One. Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. - Is 40:21-26
QUESTION – have you ever thought about how awesome, how great, how amazing, how powerful, how indescribable our God is? I MEAN – there is no one like Him… TO – who can you compare Him? WHO – is His equal? I tell you who… no one!
YEAH – I really think David, nailed it 3,000 years ago when he said that the heavens declare the glory of God… AND – that the works of His hands speak day after day, and night after night making Him known. Telling all how great our God is…
AS - I was coming back from Tampa on I-4 Saturday night and I saw a sign that said, “Entering Orange County” I said, “man this is a big county…” I MEAN – I always see a sign that says the same thing on 528 as I come back from Cocoa Beach. Yeah OC is pretty big… AND – Florida is a big state. North America is big continent. Earth is a big hunk of rock. (24,000 miles around)… YET – 1 million earths would fit into the Sun (our closet star)… YEAH - I’d say the sun is pretty big… 93 million miles away and it still can warm this entire planet. BUT – as big as the sun is there are some stars so large that 500 million suns could fit inside of them.
The nearest star to earth is called ‘Alpha Centauri’ it is 4 ½ light years away… (one light year is 6 trillion miles)… This means if you traveled at the speed of light (186,000 per second)… even though you would reach the moon in 1 ½ seconds and the sun in 8 ½ minutes it would take you 4 ½ years to reach Alpha Centauri… IF – you could travel 24,000 mph it would take you 120,000 years to get there. (sand/marble 3ft sun, 100ft planet , 150 miles nearest star)
The star Betelgeuse is 520 light years away, it is one of the brightest stars on Orion’s belt. It’s diameter is 310 million miles… which means that if it were hollow, the earth could comfortably revolve around the sun inside this star..
Our solar system is part of a galaxy called the Milky Way… IT’S – 100,000 light years in diameter and has somewhere between 750 billion and 1 trillion stars… AND - the Milky Way is just one of 125 billion galaxies according to estimates by the Hubble Space Telescope…
Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make us very small. But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us. It’s about God… the reasons for ‘wasting’ so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our maker, not us..”
- John Piper
Just one more thing about the heavens declaring God’s glory… The whirlpool galaxy is 37 million light years away… AND – since it’s discovery in 1773 it has been one of the most popular and most photographed galaxy… NOT – too long ago the Hubble took a picture of it’s core. A core made up of trillions of stars. The image in the core is 1,100 light years (7 trillion miles) in size… DO – you know what the core is shaped like?
YOU KNOW - whenever I really think about God and how great He is I am just blown away, amazed… awed. BUT – do you know what I find even more amazing? THAT – this great, majestic, all powerful, always existing God wants to draw close to me.
I MEAN – I can soo relate to that Shepherd named David who for years stood out in the fields at night staring at a starry sky that would take our breathe away… (complete darkness and no pollution or artificial light too block the view…)
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens… When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? - Psalm 8:1-4
UNDERSTAND – like David, when I really think and reflect on the greatness of our God and then I look at myself… I wonder who am I that the Lord of all the earth would care to know my name let alone desire to be close to me… I MEAN – I am just one tiny speck among 6 billion other specks… Living on a tiny hunk of rock in the middle of vast universe… YET – the God who spoke EVERYTHING into existence wants to draw closer to me… Wants to be with me.
AND – He wants to be with you. THINK – about that, Almighty God wants a personal, deep and intimate relationship with you. Wants to be your Father, your Abba, your dad…
LISTEN – when you boil it all down, the story of the bible is not primarily about the desire of people to be with God… BUT RATHER – it is about God’s desire to be with His people… AND – around 500 years ago… Michelangelo captured this intense desire of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel like no else ever has (before or since)…
IF – you look closely you will notice the figure of God is extended toward Adam with great vigor. His body is twisting toward Adam with great power, his arm is stretching out, His index finger is extending forward, every muscle in His body is taunt. He is riding on a cloud propelled by angels… AND - His beard and hair are being blown back by the wind as He races to draw closer to Adam.
“It is as if even in the midst of the splendor of creation. God’s entire being is wrapped up in His impatient desire to close the gap between himself and this man, He can’t wait. His hand comes a hairbreadth of the man’s hand… Adam has already been given physical life – his eyes are open and he is conscience. What is happening is that he is being offered life with God… God is as close as he can be. But having come that close, he allows just a little space, so that Adam can choose. He waits for Adam to make his move…”
- John Orteberg.
UNDERSTAND – from the opening pages of the bible to His final revelation we see a God whose greatest desire is to be with His people. IN – Genesis 1 and 2 we read of God creating the universe out of nothing… AND – for 5 days the basic formula for creation is; “God said… and it happened…”
BUT – on day 6 God suddenly stops speaking things into being. HE – changes the formula. Why? BECAUSE - when God created man to merely speak words from a distance would not do. NOT - for the crown of His creation… NOT – for the one made in His image…
the LORD God formed (a Hebrew word that means to form or to mold… It’s the same word used in Jeremiah 18:2 of a potter carefully molding a lump of clay into a pot…) the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
– Genesis 2:7
ALMIGHTY GOD – just had to get close. THEN – God planted Adam in the garden and Scripture says that in the cool of the day God would drop by and take walks with them… THINK ABOUT – how awesome that had to be.
AND LISTEN – man’s fall, man’s sin did not remove God desire to be close to His creation…(and neither does your fall) INSTEAD IT – only intensified it… UNDERSTAND – from the moment of man’s fall God has been in a passionate pursuit to remove the distance… WE SEE - that passion as He; calls Abraham; forms a nation, delivers his people, sends his glory into the Temple… AND – that passion to be near us reached it’s climax when God himself came to this earth as Immanuel ‘God with us.’ FROM – Genesis to revelation we see a God who longs to be with His people.
John Ortberg writes…
“At the end of time, when sin is a distant and defeated memory and forgiveness is as obsolete as buggy whips, it will be sung, “God’s dwelling place in now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” - Rev 21:3
LOOK UP – God still wants to be with His people today… HE – wants to be close with everyone in this room… DO – you believe that? DO YOU – really believe that he wants to be with you? Does this truth cause your blood to flow a little faster?
AND LISTEN – one of the main reasons God desires this closeness with us is for the same reason he desired to draw close to Adam in Genesis 2… God wants to breathe life, new life into each and everyone of us… WE – are His new creation…
UNDERSTAND – the bible is FULL of awesome pictures of what life is like for those who follow Jesus… I MEAN – these descriptions are incredible. Jesus talks about how He came to bring life in all it’s fullness. PETER (in his first letter) – talks about God’s people being filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. PAUL – talks about; having a peace beyond understanding, experiencing authentic joy in the midst of hardships and being content in and every situation… well fed or hungry, cold or naked…
AND [Tim, Laurie] - these descriptions are always presented as things that you and I shouldn’t just hope for but should expect. YES – those awesome descriptions of a new & better life ARE possible for very ordinary people like you and me. Why? Immanuel has come and he will be with us until the end of the ages…
THIS – past Sunday Mike kicked off a new series of messages taken straight from the Sermon on The Mount in Mt 5-7. AND IN – these verses Jesus gives a powerful description of what life is like for those who choose to follow Him… IT’S – a life where we;
• Control our anger
• Are quick to resolve issues with other people
• Turn away their lust
• Have good marriages
• Keep our word
• Tell the truth
• Never seek revenge
• Love & pray for our enemies
• Do things only for God and not to be seen by others
• Pray bold prayers that open doors
• Forgive people who hurt us
• Store up treasures in heaven
• Never worry about anything
• Seek God’s kingdom first and allow (His will, agenda & desires) determine all of our priorities
• don’t judge other people to their face or behind their backs
• Are constantly removing planks from our own eyes so they can take the speck out of the eyes of others
• Do to AND Do for other people – all the things we wish that people would do for us
• Choose the narrow road
• AND WHERE WE – build our lives on the storm weathering solid rock of God’s word.
QUESTION – how many here would say that the picture of life that Jesus paints in the sermon on the mount describes you? AND [Tim, Laurie] – when other people (your family, friends, co-workers…) look at your life; IS THE - never worrying, love your enemies, plank removing, narrow road walking, storm weathering building, peace beyond understanding, contentment in every situation LIFE, what they see?
HEY – let me tell you what I think happens. I THINK WHEN - a lot of people first hear Jesus’ message, about the gospel, about living this new life. THEY ARE - overwhelmed by this vision and this hope, BY - the beauty of it, and they say, “Yes, I want that life.” AND FOR - a time, there’s a kind of a spiritual honeymoon period. They’re filled with love for God, They’re drawn towards the Bible. They want to tell other people about Jesus. They love to worship and some things change. Maybe their coarse language gets cleaned up. Maybe certain addictions get overcome. Maybe they get involved in serving or something. But over time this sense of progress, this sense of growth and change kind of stalls out.
AND - instead of my life looking like this amazing picture painted in the New Testament, it looks like this. I yell at my kids whom I love. I worry too much about money or my job. I get jealous of people for stupid, petty reasons because I think they’re more successful than me or more attractive. I use deception to get out of trouble or to get what I want. I pass judgment on people so easily, so casually, so arrogantly. I do again the things I said I would not do, My devotional life, my prayer life, is kind of up and kind of down.
YES – Jesus and the rest of the N.T. writers paint pictures of a new kind of life that are incredibly beautiful and breathe-taking… AND – easy to understand. HOWEVER – for most of us there is this huge gap between the promised life and reality. IN – the prelude of His book ‘Renovation Of The Heart’ Dallas Willard writes;
The vision is clear, and no one open to it can mistake what it means. But while all is clear and desirable, we must admit that, in many historical periods as well as today, Christians generally only find their way into this divine life slowly and with great difficulty, if at all.
I believe one of the reasons why so many people do in fact fail to immerse themselves in the words of the New testament, and neglect or even avoid them, is that the life they see there is so unlike what they know from their own experience. This is true even though they may be quite faithful to their church in the ways prescribed and really do have Jesus as their only hope. Therefore the clear New Testament presentation of the life we are unmistakably offered in Christ only discourages them or makes them hopeless.
QUESTION – can anybody relate to what Willard just said? I MEAN – all this talk;
• of an inexpressible and glorious joy
• of a peace beyond understanding
• of freedom from; fear, guilt and anxiety
• of being a new creation
• of living a new life
SOMETIMES INSTEAD - of being inspired by these words, they just make me feel discouraged or guilty or confused or just tired. YOU SEE – like Adam I got this gap. I MEAN – I can see & understand this new life that is promised… AND – I know that it is a life of such goodness and beauty and energy and joy that it has captivated the human race for two thousand years… BUT - then there’s reality.
YES - in between the reality and the promise is this gap… AND HERE – is the question: What do people do? What do you do? (and you are doing something).. when over time you’re not closing this gap anymore, you’re not getting any closer to God? What do you do when you want to be sincere follower of Christ, and your involved in church… BUT – there’s this gap between reality, and the promise and it’s not getting any smaller?
GUYS – this is a very real issue… BECAUSE – we have a gap… AND – we all have chosen a way to deal with it. I want to wrap up tonight by talking about some of the choices people make in dealing with this gap… (And let me say that I am indebted to one of mine book mentors John Ortberg for much of this stuff)… OKAY - some people in dealing with this gap, take;
The I’ll Just Try Harder Approach;
I SEE - this in a lot of people. “I’ll close the gap by my own power and strength. I’ll get up earlier. I’ll pray longer. I’ll read another book. I’ll listen to another tape… I’ll serve more. I’ll work harder. I’ll try to be nicer to people in my life.” IF – this is you… you hear about somebody who gets up at four o’clock in the morning to pray and you feel guilty because you think, “I don’t pray enough,” so you resolve to do that too. Even though you’re not a morning person. Even though at four o’clock you’re dazed, confused, groggy and grumpy… and nobody wants to be around you then. I MEAN - even Jesus does not want to be with you at four o’clock in the morning. But you say to yourself, “Well since, this is hard, exhausting and I’m miserable - it must be God’s will for my life. It must be spiritual. It must be good for me.”
AND - you keep it up for several days or weeks or even months, but not forever. You can’t sustain it. SO – eventually you stop and when you stop you feel guilty. AND – you stay in that guilt until you find something else TO DO… AND THEN - you start doing that… AND – you get caught in this cycle (this rut) of doing something… over and over and over again… until you can’t do any more… Stopping and THEN doing something else.. AND – the truth is; you are getting pretty tired, and I don’t mean just physically tired. I MEAN - you are weary in your soul. AND – you are so afraid that the gap is never going to close.
UNDERSTAND - it was to just such people that Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
AND LISTEN – Jesus was not talking about people who were just stressed out by life or who had too many things to do in their work or home. BUT RATHER - He was talking to people who were oppressed and exhausted by a system of spiritual effort. SO - He says, “All of you who are weary, come to me and I will give you rest.” AND - the truth is that for some of you, those have always been confusing words (rest, easy and light)… BECAUSE (your experience of walking with and living for God has always been) – exhausting, heavy and hard
ANOTHER – approach that some people take in dealing with this gap between reality and the promised new life is;
The If I Can’t Make It, I’ll Just Fake It Approach;
AND - people who take this approach just pretend that the gap isn’t even there. YOU SEE – they know 2 things… They know what the promised life looks like (they know they are not there)… SO - they decide to fake.
I MEAN – they know all the right ‘spiritual’ lingo… They’ve been around long enough to know what to say and how to act to make people think that they are always walking in the cool of the garden with God… WHEN - in reality they are stuck on traffic on I 4 – their car is over heating and their A/C is broke.
BUT YET – they talk as though their life is like a miracle a minute. They smile a lot. Every prayer gets answered. Every decision is a word from God. Every sentence ends with, “Praise the Lord.” YES – over the years they have gotten real good at impression management. BUT – it’s not real. AND – it has brought them no closer to the promised life.
When I was a kid back in the 1970’s (man I’m getting old)… My parents had a blue, 4 door, 1972 Chevy Impala. It was an okay car except that it didn’t have air conditioning… OR – the latest thing in car audio an 8 track tape player. WELL – one day a couple of my family members did something in that car that was really silly (Now, I won’t name any names in order to protect the innocent… NO – I wasn’t one of them).
ALRIGHT – picture this… It’s a hot sunny summer day in Baltimore and these 2 reasonable intelligent people made a choice to fake it. THEY - drove around the day with the windows of the car up so the other cars passing by would think that they had air conditioning… NOW – I wasn’t in the car with them… BUT – am sure that as the sweat poured down their bodies, they KNEW that they were not living in the environment they were pretending to be in. AND – more then likely if any other cars took the time to take a close look – they too saw the sweat of pretending…
GUYS – it’s the same thing when we pretend that there is no gap between were we really are and the promised life of the kingdom. WE – know it… and any one who takes the time to take a close look at us knows it too.
A 3rd way to deal with the gap is;
The I Give Up Approach;
Eventually, some people just give up because after awhile that gap is just too painful. AND AGAIN - when they hear the kind of stuff we’ve been talking about today they feel discouraged or hopeless. AND - inwardly they decide that this promise of new life (at least for them) is not even possible.
NOW - they generally don’t say that to anybody else. They may not even admit it to themselves. YOU SEE - they stay a Christian. THEY - keep going to church. THEY – stay involved in church life. THEY - hope that they’re going to go to heaven when they die. BUT THEY - decided there is nothing that can be done about that gap… AND - secretly they just give up.
Working harder, pretending, going to different churches, giving up…
BUT [Tim, Laurie…] – WHAT IF there is another way to deal with this gap? What if there is another way to find, experience and live the life that the Father has promised TO us and the Son has bought FOR us?
LISTEN…
• IF - you hunger for the living God…
• IF – you thirst for His full and abundant life?
• AND IF – you at times this life seems hard to reach…
YOU – are not alone. UNDERSTAND FOR – centuries men and women just like us have had the same hunger… have had the same longing…
AND – those who experienced the new life… did not simply try harder, pretend or give up… INSTEAD – they made sure that some practices were a regular part of their lives. THEY – called them Spiritual Disciplines…
NOW – they knew that those disciplines in and of themselves could not transform… BUT – they also knew that those disciplines would put them in a place where the Lord of glory could breathe new life into them…and really make them a new creation…
Those disciplines are how we lift our finger and make contact with the desire of God… THIS – is the journey that we will be taking together the next 10 weeks… NEXT – weeks message is about Man’s Greatest Pursuit (what it is and what it isn’t)
Homework
1) Spend some time looking at creation. Looking up in the sky (and allow yourself to be blown away by the greatness of your God).
2) Remind yourself that the Lord of all creation wants to draw close to you
3) Reflect on the kind of life that God wants to breathe into you…
4) Stay hungry
