SERMON SERIES FOR LENT 2015

     At the Cross Roads:

When We Don’t Know God

Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Philippians 3: 4-14                                                                                                                                              

Pastor Robyn Hogue                              March 22, 2015                      Skyline Presbyterian Church

 

Writer Bruce Wilkinson reminds us of the story of the late Howard Hughes. Wilkinson says that, if there was one word that would describe Hughes’ ambition, it was the word more. He wanted more money so he invested his enormous inheritance and increased it in just a few years to a billion dollars. He wanted more fame so he went to Hollywood and became a filmmaker and a star. He wanted more sensual pleasure so he used his fabulous wealth to buy all the forms of sensual pleasure he desired. He wanted to experience more excitement so he designed, built, and piloted the fastest aircraft of his time.

Wilkinson writes “Hughes could dream of anything money could buy and get it. He firmly believed that more would make him happy.” But, of course, it did not. In Wilkinson’s words, Hughes confused the pleasure of having more for oneself with the greater joy of giving oneself to something bigger than oneself. “His Dream,” writes Wilkinson, “was not significant enough to bring meaning to his life.”

And so, in his old age, Hughes became withdrawn. News reports portray him at the end of his life as drug addicted, emaciated and unkempt with decaying teeth and long, twisted fingernails. “But until his death he held onto his destructive dream that more possessions would bring more fulfillments.”

Let me tell you about another man in search of more. His name was not Howard Hughes. It was Saul of Tarsus who became Paul the Apostle. Before his conversion on the road to Damascus he also was in quest for more. In his case his quest was more religion.

Listen to his words written to the Christians in Philippi: “If you think you have reasons to put confidence in ethnic purity, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. If you think you have reasons to put confidence in keeping to the laws of Moses, I have dedicated myself from boyhood to this task and have become a Pharisee. If you think you have reasons to put confidence in your passion for God, I have more zeal for I was willing to persecute the church. If you think you have reasons to put confidence in legalistic righteousness, compare your successes against mine and you will find me faultless.”

Before his conversion, Saul was the epitome of religiosity. “He writes with utmost confidence, “I have more . . .” Saul was super-religious even to the point of persecuting early Christians. Do super-religious people ever persecute people who don’t think as they think? Yes, they do. Saul was super-religious. But it is clear, something important, indeed something critical, was missing from his life.

Saul sounds somewhat like John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists. Wesley was the son of an Anglican pastor. He was a rigorous student, careful in his orthodoxy. He lived a devout life of good works. He and his friends visited prisons, provided slum children with food, clothes, and education. They observed Saturday as the Sabbath as well as Sunday. They tithed their income above ten percent to the church, gave additional alms to other causes, studied diligently and fasted regularly. At Oxford they were known as “The Holy Club.” Then, as if that were not enough, Wesley became a missionary to the Muslim country of Georgia along the Black Sea.

But from Wesley’s personal diaries we learn that privately he wondered if anything would ever be enough. Outwardly he was super religious and inwardly smugly self-righteous. But deep in the privacy of his soul he still felt something was missing. Captured for us from Wesley’s diary we learn that at a place called Aldersgate Wesley felt his heart “strangely warmed.” And from that experience he began to trust less in his diligent good works and more in Christ alone for his salvation.

As for Saul of Tarsus, when he met Christ on the road to Damascus he realized that all of his religiosity meant nothing. Later he would write to the Christians in Philippi, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things…”

Saul’s experience leads us to a couple of critical questions: 1) What is the difference between being religious and knowing God?  2) How can we know God? Obviously, these are huge questions to address in one brief message, but let’s go with them as far as we are able.

First of all, what is the difference between being religious and knowing God? We ask this only because of the experience of devout believers like the Apostle Paul and John Wesley and many other devoted Christians down through the ages who came to a point in their lives when they realized that their religious habits and disciplines were not enough. There had to be something more.

If Paul the Apostle were here this morning he would say, “If anyone thinks they have a birthright in the church, let him or her talk to me. I was born in the church. Cradle roll from day one. I wasn’t a week old when I attended my first church potluck . . . I memorized the Ten Commandments when I was six. I memorized the Beatitudes when I was seven. I memorized the Sermon on the Mount when I was ten. I not only knew the rules at an early age, I kept them. No drinking, no chewing, no dancing. I had perfect Sunday school attendance for seventeen straight years, and it would have been longer if the doctor hadn’t insisted that the flu was not something I needed to share with my sisters and brothers in Christ.

“But I woke up one day and realized that . . . my strict adherence to the rules meant little to me. I was always striving to be good, to be the best, to be righteous, but I was constantly frustrated with my failures . . . Everything that I have tried to do in my life to make God like me now seems so worthless. I was striving to will myself into being a person worthy of God’s love and all the while God was trying to tell me that I was already loved.

“I’ve thrown away the rulebook and stopped keeping count of my wins and losses as a Christian. I’m trying to live in a free, loving relationship with Christ my Lord, who calls me to follow Him, not just a set of commandments . . .”

Paul’s discovery was an honest one. When we seek to be religious, we have a tendency to focus on rituals, rules and regulations, not upon the more pressing business of our relationship with our neighbor and God. Rituals, rules and regulations can be helpful in living out our faith, but they can also become an idol in themselves, so that they actually cause us to despise our neighbor and to ignore the prompting of God toward a deeper sense of God’s presence.

Let me give you a concrete example of this, though this may burn just a little.

In his book The Call, Os Guinness tells a story about Dr. Arthur Burns, the former chair of the Federal Reserve Board. Although he was Jewish, Dr. Burns agreed to join a White House Bible Study. Since he was Jewish, the other members of the study were afraid to ask him to pray at the end of their time together.

One day they had a guest leader who didn’t know about this unwritten rule. He asked Dr. Burns to pray. To everyone’s surprise, Arthur Burns stood up and began to pray, “O God, may the day come when all Muslims will come to know Jesus and when all Jews will come to know Jesus, and when all Christians will come to know Jesus.” (1) Ouch, that hurts, doesn’t it? But it is true.

Would it surprise you if I said that there have been many super-religious people who have done terrible damage in our world? Think Inquisition. Think Salem witch trials. Think 911. How do you know if you know God? Just being religious is not enough. The very best place to hide from God just might be in religion, especially religious fanaticism. So, how does one know?

Here is the best answer I can give you: Are you trying your best to live like Jesus? The formula WWJD is much maligned (What Would Jesus Do?) but we have no other reliable guide. Maybe it would be better to use WWJDTM (What Would Jesus Do Through Me?)

What is the best guard against doing horrible things in the name of Jesus? Focus on His character. Can you imagine Jesus condemning people because they look different, or talk different, or act different, or even believe different from how you believe? The only times I can think of that He scolded anyone were: His ridicule of men about to throw stones at a woman caught in adultery, His reaction to the moneychangers in the temple who were taking advantage of people in the name of God, and His reaction to many of the super-religious Pharisees who professed love for God, but looked down on others.

Of course, there were other components to Christ’s character besides compassion for the least and the lost. There was Christ’s dependence on prayer and His intimate relationship with God the Abba and of course, His willingness to lay down His life as a sacrifice for all.

This brings us to our second question: How can we know God? And the answer is to look to Jesus. He shows what God is like because He is God incarnate. There is nothing else you need do. Look to Jesus and ask God to be revealed and known in Jesus.

Reading your Bible with other people who can talk with you about what it means and what it leads us to do is good. Being a positive agent for change, getting involved in acts of social justice is good. Learning to pray is good. Becoming generous is good. All these are time-honored ways of showing that you love God. But they are not prerequisite to knowing God. Knowing God is simply a matter of tuning your heart to the presence of God.

Faith is a gift. To know God is simply to say yes to God. God is already running down the driveway, moving through the briars and the brambles of the wilderness, knocking at the door to reach you with a divine embrace. Just say yes. Pray, “Lord Jesus, be Lord of my life and make me like You.” Isn’t that what Paul was seeking when he wrote, “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

Do you know God or are you just religious? Is your faith about following rules and regulations or is it about relationships—with your family, friends and all God’s children as well as a relationship with a personal God? Do you want to know God better? Do you want to see God more clearly, love God more dearly and follow God more nearly? Simply say “yes” to God. Invite Christ to take up residence in your life and use you as an instrument of His love. Soon you will know that you know God . . . for the grace of God will be evident in your life.