Have you ever really wanted something? I mean wanted it to the point that you were convinced that you couldn’t be happy without it. Maybe someone else had it and they looked happy and you were convinced that this thing was the key. You had to have it.
I can remember a few times in my life where I’ve felt that way. One of those times, I was about six years old and I saw on the TV a commercial for super secret spy decoder glasses. They were the coolest thing that I had ever seen and I was convinced that I could not go on, my life would not be complete, without these glasses! Now, on the commercial, these glasses could see through walls and light beams came out of the side of them and the kids wearing them were dressed like secret agents and they looked like they were having the time of their lives, I had to have a pair of those glasses!
The best thing was, they were free! All you had to do was send in 10 proofs of purchase from Fruity Pebbles Cereal and $2.99 for shipping. This was a bargain for something that was going to change my life! See, there was a promotion that was going on where you had to find where Fred had hidden the Fruity Pebbles so Barney wouldn’t get them. If you figured it out you would win all sorts of great stuff. The clues to find the hiding spot were on the back of the box and to read them, you had to have super secret spy decoder glasses.
For about a month, I ate Fruity Pebbles non-stop. I wouldn’t let my brother or sister help eat them because then they would want to use my glasses and if they wanted the glasses they could eat their own ten boxes of cereal. Well, finally I had eaten enough and I sent away for the glasses and it was like six weeks later that the package arrived.
My first thought was that the package seemed way too small; it was more of an envelope really. The glasses they showed on TV couldn’t fit into something that size. I tore open the envelope and took out these paper 3-D glasses that looked nothing like I expected, I put them on and I couldn’t see through walls, I didn’t look like a secret agent, I looked life a doofus. And the worst part of all was that the promotion was over and a week before I got my glasses, the commercials started telling you where Fred had hidden the Pebbles so I didn’t even get to play super sleuth and figure it out.
I remember holding those cheap glasses and thinking to myself, “Is this what I had been waiting for?” Is this why I’ve been checking the mailbox seven times a day for six weeks? Is that all there is? Is this it?” It wasn’t what I expected and it wasn’t going to change my life.
All of us have expectations of what we really want in life, of what we simply have to have and can’t live without. As we grow up, they change from the things that we wanted as kids, but there are still things that we are placing our hope in to make us happy. For some of us it’s jobs, for some of us its homes, or money or relatoinships. We go to great lengths to get what we want and to be where we want to be and often when we get there, we feel cheated because what we were seeking after doesn’t turn out to be what we thought it would be. It doesn’t bring us the happiness we were looking for, it doesn’t change our lives and it doesn’t fill the desire in our hearts for meaning and purpose in life.
All of us were created with a longing to know why? Why we were put here, what the point of life is, what our purpose and reason for living is. What will bring us joy? And we look for answers in a lot of different ways. For some in here this morning, you’ve found those answers in a relationship with Jesus Christ. For others, you may not have turned to Christ, but this longing has produced a curiosity about religion and God. You want to believe that there is a God, or at the very least that there is something more to this life than just what we see before our eyes on a regular basis. You hope that there’s a heaven that you can go to after you’ve lived your life on Earth. Everyone, at one time or another has pondered the larger than life issues of what else is out there. People’s curiosity has led them to many different conclusions and to many different ideas about who God is or about what He’s like. Most people have a mental picture of what they think God is like.
Some see him as a kind of Greek god, or mythical being with a long flowing beard and a lightning rod in his hand patrolling the heavens to see whose life he can mess with today. Some see him as a grandfatherly type always ready to give a hug and hand out treats. Others picture him as a father who can never be pleased no matter how hard we try. Some think he’s disinterested, he’s got more important things to do than worry about us here on Earth. Others think that he’s too interested, dabbling in the affairs of men for his own humor and amusement. If you asked 1000 people how it was that they pictured God, you probably would get 1000 different answers.
This morning I want to paint a picture of God that may be new to some of you and I’m going to take it straight from the source, from the only one who truly knows God, his Son Jesus Christ.
MT 11:27 "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
When Christ came to Earth, He began to reveal to the people what God was really like, he began to show them the true nature of God.
In the verses that I want to look at together this morning, Jesus reveals to us the one characteristic that really defines God and that is love. Jesus reveals a much different picture of God than the people expected or were used to and it’s a much different picture than some of us have in our minds.
Jesus was talking with His followers and he was trying to make them understand the point he was making and so he told them this story. Read Luke LK 15:3
3Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, `Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
He paints the picture of God as a shepherd who is not content that most of his sheep are safe and with him. He wants all of his sheep to be safe in his care and so he’s willing to leave the ninety nine and head out after the one sheep who still hasn’t come home. The shepherd in the story is God and the sheep represent us, His creation. God is a God who loves us and who pursues us. He is active in seeking out those who don’t yet know Him. You may think that God will only love you if you do certain things or act a certain way but, in the story, he leaves those who already are following him, the ninety-nine, and pursues the one who is not following, who hasn’t come home. His love is not limited by what we do, his love is in spite of what we do.
I want to pull a few truths out of this story that describe the reality of God as He relates to us.
1) God Calls to You.
Every once in a while we’ll look outside and our kids will have disappeared. What’s the first thing we do? We call their names. When you are searching for someone, the logical place to start is by calling out to them and God does the same thing. He calls each of us and invites us into a relationship with Him. The problem is that often that voice gets drowned out by all of those things that surround us. The Bible says that God speaks in a still small voice and we live in a big, loud world. We’re surrounded by distractions that can keep us from hearing God’s voice as He calls out to us. So, the one who will hear that voice calling is the one who is listening for it.
We played a game in our church in Ohio a while back. We took a whole bunch of little kids, probably 3-5 years old and blindfolded them. We had the fathers stand in a circle around them and all call out to their children. It was chaos, but every kid found their dad because they knew which voice to listen to.
Maybe you’ve heard God begin to call or maybe you’ve never heard it. If you set aside the distractions and listen for His voice, it’s there, calling out to you, wanting you to come home.
2) God Comes to You
Every once in a while, the kids won’t answer right away when we’re looking for them. As a parent, you get just a little worried. When they finally do respond, my natural instinct is always to head towards where I hear their voice. I go to them. God does the same thing. When we respond to His voice, he comes to us and meets us wherever we are on our journey in life.
Some people feel like we need to work our way to God. We picture him standing with His arms crossed watching and waiting as we do different things in our lives to try and get ourselves closer to where he is. We picture Him like the ancient wise man who places himself on the top of the mountain and requires all who would see him to climb the mountain to get there. That’s not God. He desires a relationship and when He calls and we answer, we take that first step, he comes. It doesn’t matter how far away we’ve gone, that first step back is where we’ll meet God.
3) Carries You
The third thing that we see here is a beautiful picture. Not only does he call, and not only does he come, but when he reaches us, he picks us up and carries us. He provides the strength that we need to get through this life.
My son is 7 now and he’s at that age where I don’t really carry him that much any more. He’s too cool for that. But there are still times when his arms reach up and he asks to be held. When he’s scared, I get to hold him. When he’s tired and out of energy, I get to hold him. When he’s sad and needs someone, I get to hold him. God does the same for us.
ISA 46:4 Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.
What a wonderful promise to us. What a different picture than many of us have of who God is. Jesus gives us this picture of the farmer heading back to the fold with the lost sheep slung over his shoulders and a big grin on his face. And we’re told that when he finds that sheep, all of heaven rejoices. There’s a party going on every time a lost one is found, when they respond to gods voice, turn and see Him coming, and then let him carry them back home.
It’s a picture of God’s love. Not a disinterested, distant, vengeful God, but a loving Father who is passionately pursuing us. That’s the God we serve. Wouldn’t everyone want to serve a God like this? Well, no, because there’s those distractions that we talked about earlier. Those things that keep us busy, that we think will fulfill us, but ultimately aren’t at all what we expected and leave us empty.
I may be the worst father in the world. A few years ago when my daughter was about 2, we were having a dinner a the church where I was the youth pastor. Catherine had been playing outside and was pretty dirty so I took her in to the bathroom to clean her up. I got her all clean and set her down to wash my own hands. I only took my eyes off of her for a couple of seconds, but when I turned around, she had a urinal cake from one of the toilets in her mouth. Now, that didn’t make me a terrible father, that could happen to anyone. What made me a terrible father was that my first thought was not for my daughter’s health and well being. My first thought was, I’m not going to touch that. So I turned her head towards the urinal and began to smack her in the back of the head, hoping to dislodge the cake. No luck, I hit her a few more times for good measure and then reached in and pulled it out and proceeded to scrub my hands and her face and mouth. I was never going to tell a soul until she ran out and into the arms of my wife and planted a huge kiss right on her lips. I had to explain why I was laughing so hard and the story came out!
Now, to my daughter, I’m sure that the urinal cake looked like a big piece of candy. It looked like something that she would enjoy. Little did she know that it was nothing like she expected. In the same way, we can try and fill our lives with all sorts of things that look good on the outside and that promise to satisfy that hunger for something more, for something fulfilling and complete that we have inside. But anything short of God is not going to satisfy. Whatever I thought those super spy glasses were going to do for me, they fell well short. And whatever my daughter thought that she was biting into, she got a raw deal. Anything that we put our faith in and pin our hopes to in this world will fall short of our expectations. Just like those super spy glasses didn’t make me the happiest kid in the world and my daughter wasn’t satisfied with what looked like a good snack, But understand this, where everything else falls short, God exceeds event he loftiest expectations. No matter what you expect from Him or how you describe Him, He is the only thing that is always better than we can imagine and that will never let us down. The bible says to taste and see that the lord is good, everything else, like that urinal cake, is just going to leave a bad taste in our mouths.
We have a God that loves us, you have a God that loves you and He’s calling to you, He’s ready to come you, and He’s strong enough to carry you. He wants a relationship with you. If you don’t have that this morning, we’d love to tell you how you can through that same Jesus who came to reveal God to us.
