Part One: Making God s Name Holy By Sten Carlson

Transcription

1 Part One: Making God s Name Holy Part Two: Stop and Be Amazed!, page 7 Part Three: Take Off your Sandals, page 14 Part Four: Dirty Little Secrets, page 21 Part Five: Who Me?, page 30 Part Six: From Brokenness to Mission, page 37 Part One: Making God s Name Holy By Sten Carlson I don t know if you paid close enough attention over the years, but there was a growing trend in Christian culture more so pop Christian culture. 1/3 of this trend I really did appreciate that s kind cool. 1/3 made me smile it s clever. But 1/3 also made me a little concerned that could be dangerous that could tip too far in the wrong direction. That trend that I m referring to was this: the Jesus is my homeboy phenomenon. Did you see these t-shirts? They were popular at Christian concerts and college campuses for a while. If you were cool and a Christian, you definitely wanted one of these shirts. True confession time: who owns one? Don t be shy! I never owned one (not because I wasn t a Christian, it s probably cuz I wasn t cool enough) but for the sake of this message I made my own that I thought you all might appreciate!! [Slide] 1

2 I don t know the real reason, but I m assuming the idea behind the Jesus is my homeboy phenomenon was an attempt to make Jesus or to make God a little more real a little more personal! And I can appreciate that. I think so many people have a warped image of God. So many people imagine this old angry man, sitting on a big chair behind a giant stained-glassed window in the clouds, stroking his long white beard in disapproval at all the people below. That picture couldn t be any further from the truth-- that God was so personal that he sent his son, to put on flesh just like you and me-- to come down and walk on this earth among his people. It doesn t get any more personal than that! So if the Jesus is my homeboy t-shirt was designed to re-shape people s view of who God is and what his son Jesus is all about, then I m down with that. I can appreciate that. But if this homeboy phenomenon is left unchecked, it can be dangerous. Little by little, God is just turned into our buddy, our pal he just becomes daddy. Have your heard people pray like that? Dear daddy. He s just so warm and soft and snuggly. Now look, I m not saying that God is not a friend to you and me. I m not casting doubt on the fact that he and should be regarded a good, good father in heaven. But the tricky part can be the more personal we make God, the less powerful we experience him to be. The more we make God our buddy the more we forget that he is the creator, and the sustainer of life the author of the story of your salvation and mine! Too often, we don t relate to God like that is true. That is what is driving the heart of this series. Somewhere between God being our pal, and Google and science answering all of life s questions, God s image has lost its luster. People have lost their awe of him and his glory and power starts to fade. Do you ever feel like that? Like God is personal to you, but not always powerful in your life or in the world as you thought he should be? My wife and I just had a conversation like that the other day. Like we know God is with us, he s personal, we can see his fingerprints on certain details of our lives, but we wondered, why don t we experience more of God s power. Maybe you think, man, I sure thought the creator of the world wouldn t have let the things get so out of whack in the world or in your family! Well I think Jesus would teach us that how powerful God is in your life or in my life has great deal to do with how we interact with God and how we relate to him as God! Jesus cared a great deal about how his disciples would relate to God so he taught them a prayer that was intended to be a model for them, a guideline for how they were to conduct their prayer and relationship to God. And I want to take a look at a portion of that prayer one word in particular actually, to see what it might teach us about how we relate to God and how it might unlock and unleash more of God s untapped power in our life. Let s look at this prayer in Matthew 6:9-10: 9 This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 2

3 This prayer begins by addressing God as father. The term for father was Abba, which was actually a name used by children for their own fathers. It was a term that suggested warmth, intimacy and the security of a loving father. So that s why this idea that God is a close personal God who we can call father or daddy if that works for you it s not entirely off base. This is how Jesus addresses God, and his invitation to his followers is to enter into that relationship with his Father as well. He is our father in heaven. But we can t just stop there, because the next part of the prayer starts to paint an additional picture. The prayer says, hallowed be your name. I told you there was one special word, one word in particular that I wanted to place under the microscope today, and hallowed is that word. How well we understand this word is how powerful and how awe inspiring God may end up being in our life. Now let s get one thing straight right from the start. Hallowed is strange word. We don t talk like that today. And truthfully, the Bible is full of words and phrases in its original language that we don t understand and that we don t talk like anymore. And so what do we do with do those kind of words? We translate them, we paraphrase them to make more sense. Not only did our Bibles get translated into a particular language we could read, but more and more they get translated into more modern ways of speaking to help readers understand. So this word hallowed goes through a whole bunch of conversions for us to make sense of it. The first conversion is becoming a word that we use and understand. The best English translation for the word that Jesus prayed and that Matthew wrote is Holy. Hallowed meant holy or set apart. And from there, some Bibles translate it, and many of us understand this part of the prayer a certain way. When we read hallowed be your name, we translate, holy is your name. The problem is, this is only partially accurate. It s a true statement, but it s not what Matthew recorded, therefore I m assuming it s not what Jesus prayed. Matthew recorded Jesus words in a way that is suggesting something different. But it makes all the difference for you and me. See, the original language of the New Testament (it was Greek) was a far more sophisticated language than English. Much like Spanish and other languages, you could communicate so much more grammar in just one single word than you often can in English and that is the case here. Now before I go on, let me just say this. I think it s going to be my goal as a pastor to only go into grammar geek mode 1 time for every 20 years of speaking. And I don t know if I already hit my quota as I m getting started on my first 20 years, but I m gonna ask for your permission to go into geek mode for just a moment here. Can I do that? OK. The root of the word that Matthew writes is hagios which we translate as hallowed or holy or even set apart or separated from. But the thing is, in this instance, it s not an adjective, it s not a description. It s not saying, your name is holy. It s actually written in the 3

4 form of a verb to make holy, to set apart--an action word. And if there s an action, there has to be a subject a person- a thing, a noun in this case it s your name. Then, if the verb is active, that means the subject is doing the action. If the verb is passive, that means the action is being done to the subject. When Matthew records the word hagios, it s written as a passive verb meaning something is being done to the subject-- God s name. What s being done? Hagios is. God s name is made holy God s name is set apart or separated from. And the fun doesn t stop there...jesus help me, I can t believe I m still talking about grammar...but here it goes. This verb is also written as an imperative. It s a command. When I say, Lucy, pick up your toys. Or, Don t body slam your brother, those are commands imperatives. So when Jesus is reciting this part of his prayer, he s doing so, as Matthew records, using an imperative. And when you add this all together, it s a game-changer. Remember, when we read hallowed be your name, we translate, your name is holy. But what is actually being prayed is, God, let your name be made Holy. It s a petition a plea not an acknowledgement. Let your name be set apart let your name be separated from all the rest. This is an important distinction to be made because of what follows in this prayer. It s more imperatives, let your kingdom come, and let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It seems to me that there is a connection between God s name being made holy and God s will being done on earth and God s kingdom being present on earth as it is in heaven. An author by the name of R.C. Sproul, in his book about God s Holiness, has this to say about the prayer Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray. He writes: There is a kind of sequence within the prayer. God's kingdom will never come where His name is not considered holy. His will is not done on earth as it is in heaven if His name is desecrated here. In heaven the name of God is holy. It is breathed by angels in a sacred hush. Heaven is a place where reverence for God is total. It is foolish to look for the kingdom anywhere God is not revered. So, if you re looking for more of God s power in your life looking to be in more awe of what God is doing around you looking for more of his will to be done and more of his kingdom to be present-- R.C. Sproul is bold in saying, well don t look in the places where God s name is not made holy. He uses a few big words but I think it can all be boiled down to this: God s kingdom won t be found on earth as it is in heaven, if his name is not made holy on earth as it is in heaven. 4

5 This can replicate itself in so many places in your life and mine. God s kingdom or his blessings won t be as present in your business, or in your school, or in your home, if his name is not made holy there. God s will won t be done in the life of your family, or in your marriage, if his name is not made holy there. That should cause our ears to perk up a little. That should catch our attention. Because I set out today believing that so many of us would agree that we could use more of the things God on this earth and in our lives. I think most of us would admit that there is more room for this world to experience the power and the glory and the sheer magnitude of a holy, awe inspiring God. That s where we come in! Jesus is using this prayer to teach his disciples how to pray and how to relate to God. And to hallow God s name is to hold it in reverence, to honor it to set it apart from all else in order that God would be set apart in our lives. This is the very essence of the first three of the 10 Commandments. You should have no others gods before me. You should not make for yourself an idol. And you should not mis-use the name of the Lord. The goal then in your life and mine---if God s kingdom is found on earth as it is in heaven where God s name is made holy or set apart on earth as it is in heaven the goal then is this. to set God apart, not aside. To keep him separated from all the other things on the pages of our life. We set God apart from these things, not alongside all of these other things that God wants to be separate from and even elevated above. So the question is: how do you set God apart in your life? DO you set God apart? Because maybe the key to experiencing more of God is not asking, is God really holy? But rather, am I making his name holy? Am I finding ways to set God apart? It was about 8 years ago that I began working as a youth pastor at a big church in Colorado. The youth group was larger than some entire churches that I had grown up attending. And I remember the very first parents meeting I held at the beginning of the school year. I was 22 years old didn t know what the heck I was doing. When it was over, a mom came up and had a question for me. She asked me, will God be cool for my son here at this youth group? And there I stood with a dumb 22 year old look on my face. Truthfully I get what she was asking, and I don t remember how I responded. But I remember how I wanted to respond I remember telling Erica how I wanted to respond. I wanted to turn it around on her and say, let me ask you how cool is God in your home? Because he probably won t be any cooler here. Now I don t know if that would have been a good thing to say or the dumbest thing to say, but I can t help but wonder if it applies to what I m getting at today. The question for us is not, Is God holy? Is his kingdom really here on earth? I don t believe, it don t see. Where is it? The question, is Where are we making God s name holy? How are we setting God s name apart so that his kingdom might come and his will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. 5

6 So that s the question I want to leave you with today. How will you set God apart, not aside or alongside everything else in your life? How will you set God apart in your home? How will you set God apart in your family or your marriage? How could you set God apart in your business? How could you set God apart with the language you use? How could you set time apart that was special to God and honoring to him? How will the people around you see that God holds a special place in your life? I want to give you a challenge this week a 7 day challenge. The challenge is this everyday for 7 days, commit to setting God apart somehow in one of these ways or in another that comes to your mind and is appropriate for you. Commit every day to setting God apart somehow and keep a journal or a notebook of how this affects the way you relate to God. Keep a record of any of the ways that you experience God s power or holiness in a new way! Even if you re unsure of God and don t know how much you believe in him yet I d make the suggestion. It s a 7 day, no pressure, no risk challenge to find ways to set God apart in a way you never have before...and to observe if and how you relate to God differently and experience him differently. Because God s kingdom won t be found, his will won t be done on earth as it is in heaven, if his name is not made holy not set apart on earth as it is in heaven. So let s commit together, to building habits and patterns into our lives that set God apart from all the rest, not aside with all the rest. I think the sky is limit for the ways that our communities, our schools, our churches, and homes might experience the glory, and the power and the will of God around us when God s name is set apart from all the rest. 6

7 Restoring the Awe Part Two: Stop and Be Amazed By Remy Diederich Texts: Genesis 2, Exodus 19,20, Nehemiah 13, Isaiah 58 Outline: 1. By emphasizing the immanence of God (closeness), we have lost sight of his transcendence (greatness/holiness). 2. God was so impressed with his creation that he stopped everything to worship. 3. We recognize God s holiness/greatness when we do something about it. 4. When we fail to stop and recognize the greatness of God, we begin to lose the essence of what it means to be human. 5. When you stop to honor God (Sabbath), there ll be a blessing on your life. Message When people tell me what they like about Cedarbrook, the number one thing they say is how accepting it is. They don t feel judged, but welcomed no matter who they are. You all can take credit for that. People are commenting about you! I m always thankful to hear that. We ve worked hard to communicate that God accepts everyone unconditionally. Another simple reason people feel so accepted here is this building itself. It s very welcoming. That s intentional on our part. When we talked about what our building should look and feel like, we said we wanted it to be comfortable and unintimidating. We thought a lodge communicated that idea. So that s what we built. But, if you think about it, a lodge is the exact opposite of what churches used to shoot for. Think about a cathedral. In a cathedral the message is that God is transcendent, meaning that he transcends our humanity. He s bigger and greater than we can ever imagine. Cathedrals were meant to inspire awe. And they do a great job of that. But a lodge communicates that God is approachable. It speaks of relationship and intimacy. It speaks of acceptance. The theological word for this is immanence. God is both transcendent and immanent. He is bigger than we can imagine and he is closer and more personal than we can conceive. Both are true, and both are important aspects of the nature of God. But it s hard to convey both at the same time. And so, when you build a building, you have to choose your message (and a budget! Buildings that convey God s immanence are much cheaper to build!) We chose to convey God s immanence. This building not only looks like a lodge, but it has theatre seats with cup holders. We dress in jeans so people don t feel like they have to dress up 7

8 to be acceptable. We serve coffee and donuts and sing contemporary songs. Everything is intentionally crafted to make your church experience as user-friendly as possible. And people like these things. But there s a cost to this. Whenever you stress one attribute of God it comes at the expense of another one. The builders of cathedrals did a great job of inspiring awe and declaring the majesty and grandeur of God, but it came at the price of God s immanence. People forgot that God is our friend, our comforter, our rescuer. As beautiful as cathedrals are, they distort our view of God. They put God out of reach. But to be honest, we ve projected a distorted view of God too. By emphasizing the immanence of God, it s easy to lose sight of his transcendence, specifically, his holiness. It s easy to lose our awe of God and become too casual about who God is, too familiar with the Almighty with coffee cup in hand and one foot up on the seat in front of us. When we reduce God to merely our friend, we can lose touch with his greatness. Honestly, that concerns me. And so this current series is meant to bring balance to our understanding of God. It s meant to restore our awe (or maybe help us find it for the first time). To help bring about this balance, I want to start from the very beginning of the Bible. The first chapter of the Bible tells us about God creating the earth. After God created everything, it says this: So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. By the seventh day God completed His work that He had done Notice the word completed. God was FULLY done. He didn t just stop for the day or the week. The task of creation had been fulfilled. You have to catch the weight of that word! and He rested (Sabbath) on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it He rested (Sabbath) from His work of creation. Genesis 2:1-3 The word here rested is from the Hebrew word: Sabbath. We ve all heard that word. We often think of the Sabbath as Sunday. But it s translated here as rested. God sabbathed on the seventh day. The word literally means to cease from work. I really don t like that they used the word rested. That might be a good word to use for humans. When we cease we also rest, but God doesn t need to rest, right? He didn t grow tired or weary. It s not like he said, Wow, that took a lot out of me. I need a day to recuperate! It just means that he ceased creating. He ceased because his work was complete. Imagine that. Imagine getting to the end of your day or the end of your week and saying, Well, I m done. I did it all. There s nothing left to do. I think I ll just stop and admire my work. Like, you get hired on Monday and on Friday you tell your boss that you are done. And he says, You mean with the tasks I gave you? and you say, No, with the job. I did everything that can be 8

9 done, solved every problem. There s no need for my position any more so I quit. That s crazy, right? That would never happen. But that s what God did. He ceased from his work because it was completed. He put the stars in place and the galaxies in their orbit. He breathed life into dirt to create humans. He brought forth animals and plants and flowers and trees, and bumble bees, and starfish, and possibly mosquitoes (I m not sure about those yet). So God says, I just did something fantastic so over-the-top fantabulous, that I need to stop everything and appreciate what I ve done. This is worth celebrating. We celebrate a lot of things in life, probably a lot of silly things. But when God stops to celebrate what he s done, it s pretty amazing. I don t know how to put into words what creation tells us about God. No one word- or even a million words, for that matter- can capture all that God did. But there are two words that we use to attempt to capture the nature of God. One is glory. We see that word a lot in worship songs but I m not always sure people know what they are singing about. Glory means the radiance or manifestation of God s beauty. Creation reveals the beauty of God. Creation is his glory. The psalmist put it like this: 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 reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. Psalm 19:1-4 The other word we use to describe God is holy. Holy means to be set apart. So, when we see the beauty of God s creation something inside of us says No one can do anything like this. What God has done is set apart from anything else. It s incomparable, untouchable beyond what any human can think, or say, or do. God s work is completely other, totally unlike anything we can imagine. W. Tozer said holiness means God is pure white, and it that s true, then the best we ll ever understand him to be is gray. 1 Our brain in incapable of grasping the whiteness of God. Or, like the song we sang today (What Do I Know of Holy?). It said that if God is the ocean, all we know is the shoreline. We know nothing of the breadth and depth of the ocean. God is in a dimension beyond us. The Bible says that he lives in unapproachable light. We need to appreciate what we don t know about God. We know very little about him. When you stand in front of the glory and holiness of God, you are speechless. We will see that in next week s message. There s nothing you can say. No words are fit in that moment- there are no words that can add to God s perfection. In fact, to say anything would be foolish. If you know the story of Peter when Jesus was transfigured, Peter started to speak and he only 1 The Attributes of God, by A. W. Tozer 9

10 embarrassed himself. In the presence of the holy, you simply stand in awe of who God is and what he s done. This is how God felt about himself on that first Sabbath. God was so impressed with what he had done that he stopped everything to worship himself, meaning that he recognized his own glory his own holiness. Now, if God stopped to recognize his glory what do you think should be OUR response? Don t you think we should also stop to appreciate his glory and holiness? So it shouldn t surprise us that when God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses one of the commandments was for us to stop every seven days, just like God did, to recognize the wonder and glory and holiness of God. The fourth commandment says this: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then He rested on the seventh day. Exodus 20:8-11 We cease to work to remember all that God did. And we cease to remember that he is so awesome that he completed his work and ceased. Ceasing is our way of worshipping God. This series is meant to help restore our awe of God. And here s a key point: we recognize God s holiness when we do something about it. This is what Pastor Sten talked about last week. If you didn t hear that message, I hope you ll go on our website and read it or listen to it. He said we have to make God s name holy in our lives and he challenged us to do something every day to remind us of God s holiness. God gave us one way to do that: by taking an entire day and ceasing from our work. You might say, Remy, I can t do that. I ve got too much to do. I could really use an eighth day to get it all done! I can t imagine giving one away. But that s exactly God s point. You ll never get it all done. So at some point you have to stop and say, I m not going to chase the rabbit today. Do you know what that means? Chasing the rabbit? That s what racing dogs do. They chase a fake rabbit around the track and they never catch it. I m afraid we look like that to God, sometimes, feverishly chasing fake rabbits and never catching them: staying up late, getting up early, skipping meals and exercise, postponing or canceling appointments, always cutting corners just trying to get it all done. When we finally do stop, it s not to worship but collapse into bed or entertain ourselves, never taking time for God because we re too busy or too tired. But the more you ignore God the smaller he becomes in your life. You acknowledge him with your lips, but your life tells a different story. 10

11 The Bible tells the story of a man by the name of Nehemiah who returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Assyria. Imagine his excitement to return to his homeland after being gone for years. But Nehemiah was shocked to see what the people were doing. Sense the horror in his words: At that time I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath. They were also bringing in stores of grain and loading them on donkeys, along with wine, grapes, and figs. All kinds of goods were being brought to Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So I warned them against selling food on that day. The Tyrians living there were importing fish and all kinds of merchandise and selling them on the Sabbath to the people of Judah in Jerusalem. I rebuked the nobles of Judah and said to them: What is this evil you are doing profaning the Sabbath day? Didn t your ancestors do the same, so that our God brought all this disaster on us and on this city? And now you are rekindling His anger against Israel by profaning the Sabbath! Nehemiah 13:15-18 What he s saying is: Look, the reason I was in captivity was for behavior like this. THIS is why God sent thousands of us to live in Assyria. What are you thinking? Don t you know that God won t wink at this? You ve got to stop! He said they profaned the Sabbath. We talk about profanity as swearing. But profaning the Sabbath meant they treated it like any other day. To profane means to treat something that s holy as common. Nehemiah was shocked to learn that, what God had established as holy, they treated as common. They went about their business without ever stopping to stand in awe of God. I think we are in danger of this. Life has never been so busy as it is today. I m afraid we are more profane than we realize. We too often treat every day the same and let one day roll into the next, without stopping to reflect on the greatness of God. We don t see it because most people around us do the same. But when we fail to stop and recognize the greatness of God, we begin to lose the essence of what it means to be human. We were made to worship God. If Nehemiah walked into your world today, or our world as a church, what would he say? Would he be as shocked with us as he was with the people in Jerusalem? So my question today is: If you want to restore the awe of God to your life, then how can you stop to give God the credit he deserves? How can you instill a sense of awe to your view of God? These are crucial questions for a believer to answer. The beauty of the Sabbath, back then, was that it was built right into the rhythm of the week. And since the entire Jewish culture believed in God it was supported by the community. The Jews celebrated the Sabbath from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. Christians moved it to Sunday, to coincide with Easter Sunday. Sabbath has been a tradition since the 11

12 beginning of time, but then that tradition fell apart over the last fifty years as our culture became more secular. That s pretty significant. Our culture has changed, but God hasn t changed. His glory and holiness still deserve our stopping to worship him. I m not interested in bashing our culture. That s water over a dam. That ship has sailed. We aren t going back to the way things were fifty years ago, so we have to find ways to be creative. For example, Sunday is not my Sabbath. It may not seem like it, but Sunday is a day of work for me! So, Lisa and I take all day Friday to cease from work. It s not a day for ministry, or labor, but to rest and spend time together. We read and pray together on Friday s, and enjoy God s creation in some way (walk or bike ride) and the friends he s given us. Now, my work is never done on Thursday night. I go into Friday knowing that I didn t get it all done during my week. I never do. It will all be there again on Saturday when I go back to work. (Saturday is actually my biggest work day of the week.) But I refuse to chase the rabbit. I refuse to work on Friday, because to do that, dishonors God. He gave me six days to work. Ceasing from work is an act of worship for me. It s my way of showing God that I trust him with my workload. But, having said that, I don t want us to get legalistic about what Sabbath means. Some of you might be able to take a day to cease from work. I hope you can. But others of you may not. I think of single moms as just one example. Or people who are forced to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Or seasonal workers who have to make hay while the sun shines. I get that, and God does too. So I don t want my message to put a layer of guilt on anyone. You see, the Sabbath isn t just a day of the week. The Sabbath is your attitude as well. If you are always striving to get ahead, always working to solve a problem, you are showing God that you don t trust him. You only trust yourself. If I take Friday off but spend the entire day worrying about a problem, that s not Sabbath. If I take Friday off but never think about God once during the week, that s not Sabbath. It s just a day off. Psalm 46 gets at the heart of what Sabbath is all about: Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. Isaiah 46:10 To be still literally means to Drop the reins. I like that image. To Sabbath means to drop the reins, let go of your need to be in control of everything. When you let go of the reins, you exalt God. It s cause and effect. 12

13 That s hard for us to do. My guess is that many of us here spent hours this past week churning over a problem that you are trying to fix. Maybe it s a troubled marriage, or a wayward child, or a bad work situation, or a health condition, or legal issue that you can t fix. You ve lost sleep over it. But a Sabbath attitude means that you drop the reins and trust God to work it out. It s like I told my sister when she was first diagnosed with colon cancer. She was bound and determined to defeat cancer using every alternative method known to man, over and above her chemotherapy. I got stressed out just reading her daily regimen. So I wrote her and said, I think you ve got a great attitude, but your cure might kill you before the cancer does. You need to let go and rest in the arms of God. He s got you. One way or the other, it will be okay. She agreed that she was being a little over zealous and dialed it back. I would say the same thing to you about whatever you are worrying about today. Drop the reins be still and worship God. He s bigger than your problem. By the way, my sister was just declared to be in full remission this week. Let me read one more scripture for you. God spoke through the prophet Isaiah saying: If you keep from desecrating the Sabbath, from doing whatever you want on My holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, seeking your own pleasure, or talking too much; then you will delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you ride over the heights of the land, and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob. Isaiah 58:13-14 God says, if you keep Sabbath, I will bless your life. That s what it means when it says: You will ride over the heights of the land and enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob. I want to pray for you that you will drop the reins and acknowledge God s greatness. When you do that, you make God holy in your life. You restore the awe that he deserves. Prayer: Father, the psalmist said, Yahweh, 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 mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8) Yet God, you do care for us. You are both transcendent and immanent. Forgive us for losing that balance. Help us to place your name above the heavens and restore the awe that you deserve. Amen. Going Deeper: Use the following for personal reflection and/or to discuss with family, friends and your small group. 1. How does a building like Cedarbrook feel compared to a cathedral? What do you learn about God from the two environments? Which do you prefer? Why? 13

14 2. What s the difference between the immanence of God and the transcendence of God? Give an example of each. 3. Remy said it s easy to have a distorted view of God if you emphasize immanence or transcendence. Why is that? Do you think your view is out of balance in one direction? Why or why not? 4. Read Genesis 2:1-3. When God saw what he had done, he was so inspired he DID SOMETHING. He created the Sabbath for all generations to stop and recognize his glory. 5. Read Exodus 20:1-17. Grasping God s greatness/holiness causes us to live our lives differently. Do you agree? Why or why not? Do you think you have a grasp of God s holiness, and if so, how has it changed how you live your life? 6. Nehemiah 13: Nehemiah said the people failed to keep the Sabbath. Do you set aside a day of the week to cease from chasing the rabbit to rest and honor God? Why or why not? What would Nehemiah say about your life? 7. Why is it that not ceasing dishonors God? 8. Read Isaiah 58:13,14. God promises a blessing to those who keep Sabbath. If you cease, have you seen a blessing in your life? What has that looked like? 9. Ask God to show you different ways you can honor his greatness and not take him for granted. Restoring the Awe Part Three: Take Off Your Sandals By Remy Diederich Text: Exodus 3 Outline: 1. If you ve only heard that God loves and forgives you, you might be missing an awe of God. 2. God uses fire to communicate his holiness in a way that s hard to put into words. 3. Moses sandals represent what is acceptable to humans but unacceptable to God. 4. Encountering the holiness of God changes you forever and makes you useable for God s purposes. Message When my older sister was in high school, she lived in Austria for a summer as a foreign exchange student. I was only about six at the time. It all seemed so exotic to me my big sister living in another country. She wrote home every week, so I d go out to the mailbox every day to see if there was a letter from her. I remember the special blue envelopes she used that were used just for foreign mail. 14

15 Fast-forward fifty years. My youngest daughter, Becca, went on an eleven-month mission trip where she served in eleven different countries. When we wanted to communicate with her, we didn t have to walk to the mailbox to send her a letter. We just opened up our computer and called her on Skype. We kept in touch with Becca in every country as she traveled the world. Now, for me, using Skype was awesome, literally. I was full of awe at the technology and so thankful for it. I mean, I remember writing and receiving those letters from my sister. But there was lots of waiting and disappointment when the letters didn t come on time. A couple letters didn t even make it to us until she had already returned home. And so, to instantly see our daughter, and talk to her in real-time, was amazing. But for kids growing up today, Skype is like, old news. It s soooo That s ancient history in today s world of technology. They are NOT impressed. I mention this because this same phenomenon has happened with God. We ve come to take God for granted. We ve lost our awe of him. Our problem is, we grew up in an age of grace, much like the young kids today have grown up in an age of technology. Just like they don t know what it s like to have to wait to communicate, we ve never known the full weight, or dread, of God s holiness like the Jews did before Jesus. In fact, the Jews had a saying: It s a great and terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. I wish we could all travel back in time before Jesus walked the earth, when God s Spirit was hidden behind a veil in the Temple. The only person allowed into the presence of God was the high priest, and he could only enter God s presence once a year, and he could only do that with the blood of a lamb. If he failed to follow procedure, he would die. It was serious business. People lived in a healthy fear of God, but Jesus changed all that. Jesus made a way into the presence of a holy God. That s why they called the message, the gospel it meant good news. You see, the people in the first century knew what it was like before and after Jesus. They knew the awesomeness of God before they knew the love of God. I m afraid that most of us today have lost that knowledge. My point is, if you grew up only hearing that God loves you and forgives you there is a good chance that you have no awe of God. The truth is: to fully appreciate God s love, we must first be in awe of his holiness. I read a blog recently where the author was in a worship service. The pastor said he wanted people to call out an end to this sentence: Lord you are. The blogger said that people called out words like: love, or mercy, or compassion. No one said, Lord you are just, Lord you are holy, Lord you are righteous. And he found that odd. He said it was apparent to him that we ve selected out a God who is full of love but has no glory. He is no longer holy. The author added: 15

16 We evangelicals love talking about God s love. Just drop in on one of our church services and listen. You ll hear worship choruses dripping with lyrics that border on romantic. The sermon will gush with assurances of God s affection. While such affirmations are good we need reminders of God s love rarely do we speak of God s majesty, let alone whisper a word about his wrath. Among young Christians, this one-sided view of God is especially striking. Jesus is a homeboy or boyfriend. God is the big guy upstairs. Talk of divine holiness is dismissed as legalistic or judgmental. Drew Dyck The purpose of this series is to help us recapture a sense of God s glory and holiness. I want to restore a sense of awe to the way we think about God. Until we can grasp the weight of God s holiness, I don t think we can fully know God. Last week we looked in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, to learn about God s holiness. Today I want us to move to the second book, Exodus. It s interesting that the word holy or holiness is only used once in the book of Genesis. But in the book of Exodus, the word appears 78 times. That got my attention! Clearly something happened to cause the word to spring up like that. So let s see what that was. First, a little context. When the book of Exodus begins, God s people were slaves in Egypt. The Pharoah was killing Jewish baby boys to prevent future rebellions. But one mother was smart enough to save her son by floating him in the river, hoping someone would find him and raise him. Of all people, the Pharoah s daughter found him, not knowing he was a Jew. She adopted him as her own, and ironically, raised a Jew in Pharoah s palace. One day, Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Jewish slave and so Moses killed the Egyptian. Then Moses ran away to live with his father-in-law, hiding out as a shepherd in the desert. And that s where I ll begin the story: Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb (Mt. Sinai), the mountain of God. Exodus 3:1 It was called the mountain of God because it s the mountain where God gave the Ten Commandments. Moses was no longer a privileged aristocrat. He went from living in the palace to sleeping with sheep in the desert. It had to be humbling for him. He must have felt like a loser, destined to just live out his days in obscurity. I have to smile at this because, here he is, dejected, and alone, having no clue that God was just about to speak to him and radically change the trajectory of his life. So, if you are feeling like a failure today, this is a good story for you. You might be closer to God radically changing your life than you realize. Let s keep reading: 16

17 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. Exodus 3:2 What I want you to notice is that God revealed himself with fire. He didn t come as a big teddy bear. He came in fire, and that was intentional. He communicated something foundational to his nature: something central to what he wanted to be known for throughout time. God often revealed himself with fire, as when he appeared to the prophet Ezekiel: Then I looked, and behold, a whirlwind was coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself; and brightness was all around it and radiating out of its midst like the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Ezekiel 1:4 God also appeared to Daniel with fire: The Eternal God took his seat. His clothes were as white as snow. The hair on his head was white like wool. His throne was blazing with fire. And flames were all around its wheels. A river of fire was flowing. It was coming out from in front of God. Thousands and thousands of angels served him. Daniel 7:9,10 It s hard to put the holiness of God into words, so God communicated his holiness with fire. Fire is something that we can all relate to. We understand the power of fire. Its power can help you. But its power can destroy you too, if you aren t careful. The letter to the Hebrews calls God a consuming fire. worship God in a way that pleases him: with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming-fire. Hebrews 12:28,29 In other words, treat God like you treat fire, with ultimate respect. But honestly, Moses probably didn t get the symbolism at that point. The fire just made him curious. Let s keep reading: So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight why the bush does not burn up. When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses! Moses! And Moses said, Here I am. Exodus 3:3,4 I m sure Moses wasn t expecting to hear a voice. He was probably a little freaked out by it. Bushes don t usually talk in the desert, unless you are eating desert mushrooms. So he didn t fully know what was happening. Then God said: Do not come any closer, Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. Exodus 3:5 This is only the second time the word holy is used in the Bible. But after this experience, Moses refers to God as holy all the time. 17

18 Now, why do you think God wanted Moses to take off his sandals? Remember, he was a shepherd. His sandals probably had a variety of things stuck to the bottom. Right? Shepherds aren t always aware of how they smell. I remember one winter I wore boots to church that I had worn in the barn that morning. They weren t my work boots, I just had to walk through the barn before I left for church. When I got to church I met in a small group of people and I took my boots off, and set them by my chair. My friend, who lived with me on the farm, looked at me like I was crazy. He picked up my boots and took them to the far side of the room. I didn t realize it, but apparently they smelled like the barn. Moses sandals were probably like my boots. They stank and God was making a point. When you come into his presence, things are different. It s holy ground, that is, ground set apart for something special. You don t approach God like you approach others. You play by new rules. His rules. He s not like us, so he has a different set of standards by which he wants to be treated. I like how God described himself through the prophet Isaiah: Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:7-9 That s a great description of the holiness of God. So, sandals represent what is common and acceptable to humans, but what is unholy and unacceptable to God. We might be fine with what we are doing, but God has higher standards. Now, we have to assume that Moses obeyed God and took off his sandals. But if Moses was a modern day Christian I can imagine him responding in a lot of ways besides obedience. He might say, But, I ve always worn these sandals. What s the big deal? Or he might say, Everyone else wears sandals. Why can t I? Or, How does wearing sandals affect the way I hear your voice? Or maybe he would say: The government has determined that it s discriminatory to demand the removal of my sandals. You can t make me take them off. It s my right to wear them. I realize it s a hypothetical conversation that never happened. We ll never know what God would have said or done, but here s my guess. If Moses would have disobeyed God, I can imagine him doing one of two things. One, he might kill Moses. That s harsh but not beyond the range of what God would do. When you come face to face with the holy God, death is always possible. Remember, he s a consuming fire. 18

19 Next week I m going to look at different times that God killed people in the Bible. It will be a great time to bring your friends to church! I know we don t like to look at those verses, but those stories help us understand the holiness of God. So that s one reaction God might have. The other reaction would be much milder. I can see God saying, Moses, Moses. You are absolutely right. You can hear me just as well with those sandals on as with them off. And it is your right to wear them if you d like. I love you more than you know, but I don t play by your rules. You either play by my rules or you don t play at all. So, I m going to say good-bye and look for a more willing candidate. I mention this little scenario because not many people would respond like Moses did, that is, removing his sandals. We want to serve God on our terms. We want him to play by our rules. We will only consider God s call if it fits our schedule and our comfort level. If suffering or sacrifice is involved, we won t do that. But God is looking for people that worship him on his terms. He is the God of love and forgiveness, yes, but he is also the God of judgment and wrath. He is the god of mercy and grace. Absolutely. But he is also the god of holiness and awe. We can t pick and choose the attributes of God like we are making a pizza, only adding the toppings we like. We need to worship God with all of his attributes in mind. God loves everyone, but he uses the people that are willing to take off their sandals: people willing to obey his commands even though they may not be politically correct. Are you that kind of person? I hope you are. Well, up to this point, Moses isn t so sure who he s dealing with. He thinks it s an angel. But like the Wizard of Oz, God pulls back the curtain and reveals himself. Only unlike the Wizard, who was quite pathetic, God is overwhelming awful (full of awe): Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. Exodus 3:6 I would love to have seen Moses just then. The look on his face must have been priceless. He thinks he s having this nice little conversation with an angel, kind of a novelty, and then he realizes that he is speaking to the Lord God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, the God he s heard about for years. This is the God who called Abraham to Canaan and made an everlasting covenant. This is the God who delivered Isaac from death and promised to bless him. And this is the God who wrestled with Jacob through the night. Moses finally gets it and realizes that he s in WAY over his head. So he hides his face because the thought was that if you ever saw the face of God you would die. 19

20 Now, I don t have time to keep tracking this encounter verse by verse. I hope you ll go home and read the rest of it yourself. But God called Moses to go back to Egypt to rescue his people. It takes a little convincing, but Moses finally agrees. Was he qualified? Not in the least. But he had one thing going for him. He respected the holiness of God. He stood in awe of God and obeyed him. God can do a lot of great things through a person like that. When Ezekiel saw God in a vision he fell down before God and worshipped him. When Isaiah encountered the holiness of God, he said: Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips. When Paul encountered the holiness of God, he said: What would you have me to do? What I want you to see here is that there s something about encountering the holiness of God that is transformative. It changes you. It alters you. And it qualifies you to be used by God. Each of the men I mentioned were used in powerful ways, but not until they first bowed to a holy God. I want all of us to worship the fullness of God and not just the God of our choosing. One author put it like this: If you don t delight in the fact that your Father is holy, holy, holy, then you are spiritually dead. You may be in a church. You may go to a Christian school. But if there is no delight in your soul for the holiness of God, you don t know God You re out of touch with God. You re asleep to his character. R.C. Sproul, Choosing My Religion So let s not be asleep to God s character! Let s restore the awe to his name. The book of Proverbs says: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Proverbs 9:10 I want to pray that this would be true for all of us today. Prayer: Father, the first commandment says that we should have no other gods before us. I m afraid many of us have broken that command. We have created a god of our choosing. We have created gods like we order ingredients on our pizza, just including the characteristics that we like. We ve created gods that we can handle without Jesus, forgetting that Jesus came to make us acceptable to a holy, awesome God. So please help us to see you as you really are, in all your fullness, and help us to worship you as you are awesome and holy and full of glory. Might we take off our sandals in your presence so that you might use us like you used Moses. Going Deeper: use the following questions for personal reflection and/or to discuss with family, friends, and small group. 1. What is some new technology that has amazed you but is unimpressive to the younger generation? 20