April 25, 2004

Service Theme – "Our God Is Lord"

Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 24

The Foundation: A Healthy Relationship with God

  1. Introduction
    1. Illustration – In a 1975 issue of Christianity Today, John R.W. Stott wrote something that still hits us right where we live: (NEW SLIDE) Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it (as cited on PreachingToday.com).
    2. Context – Today we’re beginning a four part series on how to be radical in applying our faith to one area of our lives: relationships. Applying the truths we learn in this "Building God-Honoring Relationships" series is absolutely imperative if we’re going to be transformed into His likeness and impact our world for Jesus Christ. We’re going to be looking at these relationships from the standpoint of a building. In any building you’re going to live in you have to have at least four things: a foundation, a floor, walls, and a roof. Today we’re starting out with the foundation – a healthy relationship with God. So let’s read Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 24 together, and I’m reading from the New Living.
  1. Scripture Passage
    1. Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 24 (from the New Living) – (NEW SLIDE) "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. (NEW SLIDE) 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again. (NEW SLIDE) 8 Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your forehead. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates... 24 And the Lord our God commanded us to obey all these laws and to fear him for our own prosperity and well-being, as is now the case."
  1. Loving God Above All Else
    1. A.W. Tozer wrote, (NEW SLIDE) We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God (as cited on PreachingToday.com). That’s what this passage is talking about – an everlasting and eternal preoccupation with God. My dictionary (American Heritage) defines preoccupy as "to occupy completely the mind or attention of; engross. To occupy or take possession of in advance of or before another." Think about it. That’s exactly what the Jews did – preoccupied themselves with this passage. Many Jews still start the day quoting this passage, known in Hebrew as the "Shema" meaning "Hear." But after they returned from exile in Babylon, Jews became more focused on keeping the Shema because they didn’t want to get kicked out of their land again. So they literally wore little boxes on their foreheads and their hands with this passage in them, and even nailed little boxes with this passage in them on their doorframes. But they missed the point. Their rituals became their gods. And that is exactly where we fall short. Our rituals, routines, preferences, and schedules crowd out God and become our idols. So how do we love God? How do we build the foundation of a healthy relationship with God into our lives?
    2. Notice what verse four says: (NEW SLIDE) Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. This last phrase can also be translated "The Lord our God is one Lord" or "The Lord our God, the Lord is one." While that may not mean a whole lot to us, to the Israelites hearing this phrase it spoke volumes. All the peoples of the surrounding regions had many, many gods. Some common ones were Baal, Ashtoreth, Chemosh, Molech, and Dagon. The pagan peoples worshipped many gods, because they were afraid of insulting any of them and because they felt that their very lives depended on those gods. We worship many gods – gods like our jobs, hobbies, families, schedules, even pet sins. How do we worship them? By giving them first place in our lives and even being preoccupied with them. But God says in verse four that there is only one God and that’s Him! (NEW SLIDE) So the first key to having a healthy relationship with God is taking our eyes off of our other gods and becoming preoccupied with Him. When we focus on God and loving and worshipping Him above all others, we begin to build the only solid foundation in our lives. We begin to get radical in applying our faith to our lives. John Piper summed up our problem well with his statement, (NEW SLIDE) ‘The weakness of our hunger for God is not because he is unsavoury, but because we "keep ourselves stuffed with other things"’ (as cited on SermonCentral.com).
    3. The second key is found in verse five: loving God with all our heart and soul and strength. As Bible commentator Matthew Henry writes, With a sincere love; not in word and tongue only, saying we love him when our hearts are not with him, but inwardly, and in truth, solacing ourselves with him… (NEW SLIDE) He that is our all must have our all, and none but he… To love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, we must know him, and therefore love him as those that see good cause love him. Powerful words! And when we think about loving God with everything we are, it seems so impossible! But at the same time we all have things we love with everything we are, whether it’s sports or building things or hobbies or even certain TV shows – all of us have things that we love wholeheartedly. I’m not saying it’s easy to love God with everything we are, but it certainly isn’t impossible. As Matthew Henry said, to love Him we have to know Him. (NEW SLIDE) And if we’re going to know Him, we’ve got to spend regular daily quality time with Him. Time in prayer. Time in studying the Bible, His word. Time worshipping Him. Time memorizing His Word. Daily time with Him. That’s the key. There’s no secret formula. Just the fact that, if we can get ourselves past the first six weeks or so to make this time a daily habit in our lives, we will begin to love Him with everything we are. He will be enabled to begin to transform our lives, and that’s great news! But we have to love Him with everything we are. Ryan Johnson writes, The story is told of a young student who went to his spiritual teacher and asked the question, "Master, how can I truly find God?" The teacher asked the student to accompany him to the river, which ran by the village and invited him to go into the water. When they got to the middle of the stream, the teacher said, "Please immerse yourself in the water." The student did as he was instructed, whereupon the teacher put his hands on the young man’s head and held him under the water. Presently the student began to struggle. The master held him under still. A moment passed and the student was thrashing and beating the water and air with his arms. Still, the master held him under the water. Finally, the student was released and shot up from the water, lungs aching and gasping for air. The teacher waited for a few moments and then said, "When you desire God as truly as you desired to breathe the air you just breathed -- then you shall find God" (as cited on SermonCentral.com). (NEW SLIDE) The second key is loving God with everything we are.
    4. After we become preoccupied with God and love Him with everything we are, the third key is found in verses 6-9: And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again. 8 Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your forehead. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. We’re not talking about mindless rituals here. The third key is found in making the truths of God’s Word part of the very fabric of our beings. Let me begin to explain by reading verse six from the New American Standard Version: (NEW SLIDE) "And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart." The only way the Jews could have these words on their hearts was to repeat them throughout their daily lives, which in and of itself is not a bad idea. The problem was that they were trying to internalize external words. They were trying to take what was outside of themselves and plant it inside of themselves in their own strength – a very difficult task! But with the coming of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, the words of Jeremiah 31:33 can be fulfilled in us: (NEW SLIDE) "But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day," says the Lord. "I will put my laws on their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people." Think about it! God Himself writing His truths on our hearts and minds! That’s exciting! (NEW SLIDE) God wants to weave His truth, His Spirit, Himself, into the very fabric of our beings, so that we can be preoccupied with Him alone, so that we can love Him with everything we are, so that we can be radical in applying our faith in Him to our lives. But how can this happen? Ezekiel 36:26-27 – (NEW SLIDE) "And I will give you a new heart with new and right desires, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony heart of sin and give you a new, obedient heart. And I will put my Spirit in you so you will obey my laws and do whatever I command." (NEW SLIDE) That’s the third key – asking God to give us a new heart by the power of His Spirit. Until and unless each one of us chooses to do that, we will flail around in our futility trying to keep God’s truth in front of our faces all the time, and failing because of our sinful nature that wants to worship other gods and does not want to love God with everything we are! We need a new heart, a heart of flesh as the Hebrew puts it, a heart purified by the power of the Spirit and filled totally with the Spirit. That’s what we need, and that’s the third key to having a healthy relationship with God. (NEW SLIDE) All we have to do is ask for it, and keep asking for it and keep obeying whatever He tells us to do until we get that new heart. Then we will be radical in applying our faith to our lives!
    5. (NEW SLIDE) The fourth and last key to having a healthy relationship with God is understanding why in the world we would ever want to go through all this. It’s not easy, and often it’s not very much fun. Verse 24: (NEW SLIDE) "And the Lord our God commanded us to obey all these laws and to fear him for our own prosperity and well-being, as is now the case." God has commanded us to enter into and maintain a healthy relationship with Him for our own good. Now I know you may be thinking, "Hawes, you can’t be serious about being prosperous and well! Your wife has a serious heart condition, you’ve got some health issues too, you drive an eight year old Geo and a twelve year old Plymouth. That doesn’t seem too prosperous and well to me!" Well, I have to admit that lots of times when I think about life from that perspective I don’t feel too prosperous. But am I doing well in the things that matter? Do I spend time in prayer? Yes, most days I pray two hours or more, and I still don’t feel that’s enough. Do I spend time in God’s Word? Yes, most days I spend half an hour just reading the Bible, and I still wonder if that’s enough. Do I spend time memorizing passages of Scripture? Well, I spend half an hour most days reading the Bible. Okay, I know I need to improve in that area, but do you get my point? I believe I am doing well because I am striving to know God and follow and serve Him. Can prayer and Bible reading and other spiritual disciplines become my god? You bet, if I’m not careful. But the answer isn’t to run from those disciplines – the answer is to use those disciplines as tools to run to God. I believe that it is well with me because I am striving to be preoccupied with God and to love Him with everything I am and to allow Him to keep purifying my heart, making His truth part of the very fabric of my being. That fits into God’s definition of prosperity and well-being. And that’s why we’ve got to understand that going through the process of building and maintaining a healthy relationship with God is more than worthwhile. It’s life giving, and it allows God to transform us. (NEW SLIDE) A healthy relationship with God is the foundation of a God-honoring life and God-honoring relationships, and that’s what I want more than anything. Is that what all of us want?
    6. Illustration – Pastor Wayne Cordeiro, in his sermon "A Personal Relationship," writes, Some time ago some wonderful people in our church gave Anna, my wife, and me a dinner certificate to a nice restaurant for $100. We thought, Wow, a hundred bucks. Let's go for it. We found a free evening. We dressed up. I took a bath, used deodorant and cologne—the whole thing. I even washed and waxed my car, because we wanted to take it through the valet, and I didn't want my Ford Pinto to look bad. The night came, and we were excited. We went to this ritzy restaurant and walked in. They gave us a nice, candlelit table overlooking a lagoon adjacent to a moonlit bay there in Hawaii. Oh, it was nice. And we thought, for a hundred bucks for just the two of us, we could eat high on the hog. So we ordered the most expensive thing there. It was wonderful. When the bill came, I said, "Honey, why don't you give me the certificate." She said, "I don't have the certificate. I thought you brought it." I said, "You have to have it. You're supposed to have it. You're the wife!" She said, "I don't have it." And I thought, We are in deep yogurt. Here we are. We look rich, we act rich, we even smell rich. But if we don't have that certificate, it invalidates everything. (NEW SLIDE) There are times in our lives when we can look holy, we can act holy, we can smell holy. But without a relationship with the Lord, we've forgotten something. It's relationship that validates everything else (as cited on PreachingToday.com).
    7. Are we faking it, or is the true foundation of our lives a healthy relationship with God? Are we radically applying our faith to our daily lives? Only we as individuals know the answer for ourselves.
  1. Conclusion
    1. Please bow your heads and close your eyes out of respect for God and for the privacy of those around you. How are you doing at radically applying your faith to your daily life? Are you becoming more and more preoccupied with God and are you displacing those other gods in your heart and life? Are you loving God with everything you are, working on a healthy relationship with Him through prayer, Bible reading, Scripture memory and other spiritual disciplines? Are you allowing Him to weave His truth into the very fabric of your being by giving you a new heart? Do you understand that God wants to lead you through this whole process because He wants what’s best for you?
    2. If you’ve sensed a quiet voice inside your heart telling you this morning that you need to have a much healthier relationship with Him so that you can live a God-honoring life and come to know the God of the universe intimately, now’s the time to start. The only one who wants us to put it off is the enemy of our souls, Satan. So begin that healthier relationship with God right now. Confess your sin to Him, the sin of having other gods or of not loving Him with everything you are or of not allowing Him to place a new and pure heart inside of you, right now. Tell Him that you are repenting of your sin, changing your thinking and therefore your behavior, and that you’re repenting right this minute. Ask Him to help you to leave other gods behind and to become preoccupied with Him. Ask Him to help you learn to love Him with everything you are. Ask Him to give you a new heart, one that is filled to overflowing with His Spirit, so that His truth can be woven into the very fabric of your being. Ask Him to help you understand that He is working in you for your best good, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Thank Him for all He is doing in you, and for the work He is beginning this very moment. Let’s pray together.
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