Preached · February 1, 2015
Series · The Cure
Text · Hebrews 11
What does God want from us?
So we are starting a series, our winter series, called The Cure. If you missed out last week, Pastor John had the opportunity of introducing this to us. We're going to spend about eight weeks on it, and he gave us the 20,000-foot overview of what we're going to be talking about over these eight weeks.
The Cure essentially asks this question: What if God isn't who we think he is, and neither are we? Because these are the big questions, right? Who is God and who am I? Who is the creator of the universe? Who is in charge of all of this? Who should we be worshiping, dedicating our lives to, obeying, and pursuing? And who are we? Why are we here? Why do we exist? What's our purpose? What defines us? What makes us who we are?
Now let's begin with the assumption that we all agree on at least the name of God, Yahweh, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God revealed in Scripture. And there may be some of you who aren't quite so sure about that yet, but for the sake of all of us being on the same page, let's assume at least that.
Knowing this God's name is one thing, but there's much more, more questions that we have, like what's his character, what's he like? And perhaps most pressing for us, what does he want from us?
Now this is no small question. And to be honest, I struggled and struggled with how to preach a sermon like this, because how on earth do you get up on this platform and try to explain to a couple hundred people what God wants from them, what God's character is like? Talk about a "no pressure, buddy" situation.
And the thing is, each and every one of us, we have this tendency to struggle with this question about what God wants from us. It seems intimidating. For those of us who have grown up in the church and in Christian culture, we have heard literally hundreds of sermons about what God wants from us. We've seen the libraries of books about what God wants from us. We've gotten the lectures and the guilt trips and the lessons and the teachings and the videos and the podcasts and the blogs about what God wants from us. And here we are, yet again, on yet another Sunday, listening to yet another preacher on yet another platform, as we eagerly or not so eagerly await to hear what God wants from us.
But as we are exploring these eight weeks, what if God isn't who we think he is? What I mean is this: what if we are missing the point? What if we are so busy focusing on what God wants from us, when in fact, God doesn't want anything from us? He just wants us.
From us versus us: pleasing and trusting
This difference, this "from us" versus "us ourselves" difference, is the difference between trying to please God and simply trusting God. When we start from a place that assumes that God wants something from us, then we are not truly understanding God as he really is. Rather, we're applying our own human way of being onto the divine.
Here's what I mean. Many, if not most, of the relationships that we enter into throughout our lives, we come to them with expectations. We come to them with this "what do we want from each other" type mindset. An employer wants a productive employee; an employee wants a salary. A consumer wants a quality product or a competitive price; a producer wants to make a profit. These relationships are not inherently bad or evil, though they can be distorted quickly into forms of extortion, abuse, or corruption. But they do require a pleasing mindset. Each party wants something from the other party, and so it becomes our duty to figure out how to please those expectations. These relationships are inherently transactional. We give in order to get.
However, there are a few sacred relationships in our lives where mere pleasing doesn't quite cut it, where the central focus of the relationship is not transaction-oriented, but person-oriented.
Take, for instance, the relationship between two people in love. In my relationship with my wife—though I am sure she's quite happy to receive gifts or acts of service from me, or to have a break from my incessant singing around the house—there is something else that she wants above all that. And that, quite simply, is just me.
There are times when Emily will come home from a long week at work and I'm in pleasing mode. What can I get you? How can I make dinner? Do you want to go out? A massage? Should we go to Amazon and buy that book that you wanted? And now that I'm saying this, I'm realizing this sounds like an Anthony husband commercial. That's not what I mean. What I mean is that when my wife comes home tired and ready to rest, she's not looking for a transactional relationship. She's just looking for relationship, togetherness. What makes a romantic relationship distinct from all other relationships that we have is that lovers desire each other as whole people. If I started loving my wife not for who she is, not for the whole of her person, but instead for what she can do for me, what she can give me, then something's gone quite sour in our relationship, right?
Or take the example of children and parents. While not all of us here are parents, we all have been children. We all are someone else's kids. We all recognize that desire within ourselves to be loved not for the benefits that we can bestow on someone, not to be loved for what we have or haven't achieved, but rather to be loved simply for who we are. And some of us, I pray many of us, have experienced that love of a parent, that love that stays present with us no matter how much we've screwed up, how low our grades, how few points we've scored, how many trips to the principal's office or lawyer's office or jail cell.
And for those of us who have not had that experience, who have had parents who made it very clear how truly conditional their love was—well, first of all, I'm sorry. And secondly, when we recognize this, we recognize deep, deep down that this is not the way it's meant to be.
So then, when we turn our attention towards God, what kind of relationship is it that we think he wants? One of pleasing, a "from us" relationship? Now don't be too quick to answer that question, because even though we might cognitively know the right answer, our lives tend to point us towards the wrong one.
The Cure: the fork in the road
Our book, The Cure, puts it this way in chapter one:
The ten feet in front of me are going different ways. And I realize I have no idea which way to go. I notice the tall pole with two arrows at the top pointing down each fork. What's written on them is even more confusing than the fork itself. One arrow pointing left reads, PLEASING GOD. And the one leading right reads, TRUSTING GOD. You're kidding. I'm supposed to choose between those two? I'm not doing that. Choosing one means not choosing the other. It's like being asked to choose between your heart and your lungs. What I want is a bypass, but there is no bypass. I look up at the sign that says, TRUSTING GOD. This has to be a trap, a trick question. It sounds good, but it doesn't give me anything to do. It's too passive. How will I make a difference? If God and I are going to be in sync, there's got to be something more than just trust. If the issue is me, I'm probably not going to figure out my destiny simply by trusting God can be trusted. So I move over to the PLEASING GOD sign, pointing down to the path to the left. This has to be it. After all he's done for me, the very least I can do is please him. And after a long while, I see a giant building looming in the distance. It looks like a hotel. As I get closer, I can see there's writing in bronze lettering across the front: STRIVING HARD TO BE ALL GOD WANTS ME TO BE. Finally, something for me to do. I strive after success in my career. I strive after keeping fit. Why would I do anything less for God? I draw closer and notice a door. And above the doorknob, a small ornate plaque is bolted to the heavy wooden door. SELF-EFFORT, it reads. Of course. God does his part and I do mine. It's about time someone said it. I open the door and enter the room of good intentions. Everything is white, marble, and gold leaf. It's gorgeous and opulent. Across the back wall, there's a huge embroidered banner. WORKING ON MY SIN TO ACHIEVE AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, it says.
Now, some of us, after hearing this, are confused. These things—pleasing God, working on our sin, self-effort, good intentions, striving to be who God wants us to be—aren't these all good things? Aren't these like the whole point of Christianity? Isn't this what God wants from us?
Fortunately, the good news is so much better than this. The relationship that God desires with us, with his people, is not a transactional relationship. It's not a relationship based off of "from us." It's a relationship that our marriages, our parenting, our most intimate friendships, when they are at their best, can actually, even if only in part, reflect the kind of relationship that God wants with us.
Because here's the thing. If I think that me working on my sin is what a relationship with God is like, guess what? Me working on my sin is about me. If I think that striving hard after what God wants me to be, or doing what God wants me to do, is what a relationship with God looks like, guess what? Me striving is still about me. And if I think that a relationship with God is about my good intentions, guess what? Those good intentions are about me.
Hebrews 11:6 and three Greek words
Hebrews 11:6 puts it like this:
Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Now, let's talk Greek for a second. Greek was the language that the New Testament was written in. I'm going to focus in on three words right now.
The word for "impossible" is adunatos. Now, in Greek, do you know what this word actually means? Impossible. No joke. It was used in a very absolute sense, like it's adunatos for a bachelor to be married, or it's adunatos for God to lie. That kind of impossible.
The second Greek word is the word "to please," euaresteo. Now, this word does have a little bit of nuance to it. It has the idea of bringing pleasure, of satisfaction, or to bring delight. Picture a father or a mother delighting in their infant son or daughter, not for anything that infant has done, but merely for that child being theirs.
Thirdly, the word for "faith" is pistis. Now, pistis is the root for a whole bunch of words in the New Testament that have to do with faith or faithful or faithfulness. For many, this word "faith" has become so intertwined with religiosity that another way to speak of pistis might be to speak of trust. While we can too often confuse faith for mere intellectual assent or for religious feelings or for a certain prescription of how we're supposed to live our lives, trust is a word that gets us back to its root. Trust necessitates relationship. Trust means that there is an I and a thou, a me and a not-me. And it means that in some definitive way, I've given up myself to this thing that is not myself. To trust something or to trust someone isn't just believing in some clinical, sterile sense. To trust is an act of giving up, of abandonment, of opening oneself up to another.
Now, my looking for pictures of trust took a weird detour, and so I want to show you this detour. I typed "trust fall" into Google Images, and this is one of the first pictures that comes up. I don't know if you can tell, but that's a brown bear falling from a tree. The story is that the bear climbed up the tree, kind of groggy after hibernation, and then got stuck there. And so they had to tranquilize it. And off the frame toward the bottom is a trampoline that they're going to catch this bear with. This has nothing to do with trust. I just thought it was a funny picture.
This is the second funny picture I found. Again, not trust, except kind of. This is actually a stunt team, so I don't think that anything absolutely awful is happening in this picture. Again, I typed in "trust fall," and this is what comes up. I suppose that it's kind of trusting, that hopefully the stunt material actually works, and the rope doesn't break, and all that.
But this is the other one that came up. Again, this is not even falling. Google failed me so many times. I saw one caption with this picture. It said, "I forgot how to dog." Anyway, this is what I was looking for: faith, trust, abandoning ourselves into something or someone else. So again, sorry for that detour. I just had to share those pictures with you.
Again, Hebrews 11:6 says this. Without faith—without trust, without surrendering ourselves to something that is not ourselves—it is impossible—it's not able to be done, it cannot be accomplished, you just can't do it—to please—to bring delight, satisfaction, pleasure—God. It's not our actions, it's not our doings, it's not our strivings, our good intentions, our sin management, our morality, our ethics, our jockeying for position. To know God's pleasure, all we have to do is trust.
Two things: one about you, one about God
Now some of you find this reality harsh, cruel, or even undesirable. If God's so great, you might argue, if he's supposedly so good, then why would he make it impossible for me to please him with all the things that I can do—my actions, my morals, my achievements, my charming sense of humor, and my dashing good looks? Why would God ignore all the things that I can offer him?
Well, there's two things that you need to understand, one about you and one about God.
The first thing, which is actually the less important thing, the one about you, is that we have nothing to offer God on our own. Sorry to be blunt, but that's the reality of it. Our depravity is total. Our brokenness is absolute. And to think that by our own effort we can add to the greatness of the glory of God is like an unlit candle thinking it can add to the brightness of a thousand blazing suns.
Here's the second thing, the thing about God, the more important thing. God has never not loved you. The primary reason that we can't make God love us is that God has always loved us, independent of our actions or beliefs or even our existence. Before there was law, there was creation. Before there was Sinai, there was Exodus. While we were yet still sinners, Christ died for us. Therefore, to think that we can somehow add to God's pleasure, that we can somehow cause God to love us, to think that our actions are the deciding factor in God's choice to be delighted in us—to think that is to ignore an eternity of proof that God loved us first.
I've talked with plenty of people who have mentioned waking up and saying a prayer like this: "What can I do to please you today?" First of all, why are we assuming that by our own power our actions can somehow make God pleased? And secondly, why are we assuming that God isn't already pleased with us?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the God of all truth doesn't have a will for your life that we can contradict. I'm not saying that God isn't grieved by our rebellion, that he does not know the anger or disappointment of a parent who wants the best for their child. What I am saying is that when we think that our actions can somehow change the way that God feels about us, that it can somehow affect our eternal relationship with him, then we think far too highly of ourselves and far too little of God.
The choice: pleasing or trusting
So, when we are facing these two roads, pleasing God or trusting God, we are faced with a choice. If we choose pleasing God, essentially what we are saying to God is, "Your love as it is, it isn't enough. If I can just show you how much I can do and achieve and work on my sin, then maybe I can get you to love me the way that I see fit, the way that I think that you should love me."
But when we choose to trust God, to actually believe that his love is as good and eternal and unrelenting and unfailing and unconditional as he really says, then we have the makings of true relationship. Relationship that acknowledges that there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and there is nothing I can do to make God love me less. That he loves me, he is for me, he was with me, that he delights not in what he can get from me, but that quite simply he delights in me.
The application: trust is not a thing to do
But now is where I get to the tricky part of my sermon, that pesky application part. It's the part where we wait for the hammer to drop or we see what string is attached to all of this. We're back to the part of the sermon where we find out what God wants from us. The answer is the question, "Yes, I get it, trust God, but what do I need to do?"
As long as we see trust as something to do, then we're stuck on the path of good intentions. If we think of trust as a checklist to keep, or of levels to keep track of, or something that we can conjure up from within ourselves, then we're stuck in that me-centric mode of being.
This is how the rest of Hebrews 11:6 answers this question. "Anyone who comes to God must believe, one, that he exists." By the way, that word "believe," it's pisteuo; it comes from the root word pistis. So if we're coming to God, the first thing you have to do is trust God's even there. Fair enough. And two, "that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." In other words, you really want something to do? Then trust that God is who he says he is. When he says that there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, what he means is that there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. When he says that he loved the world so much that he gave his son to die on our behalf, he means that he gave his son out of his deep love for us.
This is how God speaks of his love for us throughout Scripture:
I have engraved you on the palms of my hand.
I have loved you with an everlasting love.
For the mountains may depart and the hills will be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you.
I will rejoice over you with gladness. I will quiet you by my love. I will rejoice over you with singing.
So of course it's impossible to please God with anything but faith. Of course it is, because what else could we possibly do except live a life that trusts, that has faith, that believes that all these statements by God are actually really, truly true?
Two things trust will change
So, if you're still not satisfied with my application, I'll leave you with one more thought. This kind of trust, this choice to trust God instead of trying to please him, will change two things about your life quite radically.
One, it will change your prayer life. For me, I grew up in the church learning about the ACTS prayer: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication—supplication, a fancy word for asking God for what we need. And I remember always wanting to skip over the adoration and thanksgiving parts so I could get to the good parts of prayer, scraping out my guts with confession. I was a weird kid. And then the supplication, right? Asking God for stuff. Adoration was meant to be, you know, thanking God for who he is. Thanks, God, for being so good and awesome and powerful and all that stuff. I never really knew what to do with it. But if we trust that God is who he says he is, what would it be like to simply be in the presence of a God who loves us really unconditionally? What if we simply lingered in God's presence to recognize truly how deep his love is? Some of us have had the privilege of being around people who just exude love and that you just know are loving you no matter what your flaws or failures. And it's kind of hard not to be around those people. It's kind of hard to leave them. Well, imagine spending time with a God who's infinitely, far more unconditionally loving. As 2 Corinthians says, what if we gazed at God's glory long enough to be transformed by it?
The second change is this radically changes how you see everyone else. If God's unconditional love extends to your enemy and that co-worker you can't forgive and that sister that drives you nuts and that neighbor who revs their motorcycle at all hours of the night and the cashier who takes longer than every other cashier but you always accidentally choose their line—if God's love extends to them too and we trust that love, how does that change our posture towards those pesky people? Suddenly, we're not trying to love people we really don't like so we can prove to God how good we're getting. Rather, we're trusting that God's love is as good as he says it is and that we have no reason to question it, much less hinder or block it.
Prayer
Let's stand and pray together.
Father, we thank you for this kind of love that really can be so hard to comprehend and understand, that is really quite so different than all the other loves that we have known in this life. God, my prayer for myself, my prayer for my brothers and sisters is that we would recognize just how vain it is, how hopeless it is to try to get you to love us more because of how infinite your love already is, God. Thank you so much for inviting us into a relationship with you, a relationship that is not dependent on us cleaning up first, spit-shining our sin, but relies on us trusting. Falling deep into your love that transforms us. Pray these things in the power of Christ's name. Amen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
