1-3-10 Fundamentals: Four Small Words

I’d like you to take just one minute to come up with 4 words that describe the last decade of your life. You have two minutes and I’d like you to share your 4 words with someone around you. You cannot explain your four words. The only thing you can say to each other are the four words. Make sure that you include those people around you so that everyone gets included. 4 small words can give us great insight into the lives of other people, even over a ten-year period.

What if we could describe the meaning of the whole Bible in just four words? What if we could impart who God is and who we were created to be in just four words? Wouldn’t that be cool? I don’t know about for you, but for me, I like things simple and easy to understand. Sometimes the Bible isn’t all that easy to understand. But, wouldn’t it be cool if we could understand the main point in this book with just four small words?

I don’t know about for you, but for me I grew up around church a little bit, and then as I got older I chose to go to church by myself, but for the longest time I had all these Bible stories in my head, but I couldn’t connect the dots between the Bible stories and my story. I didn’t see where they made much of a difference in my life, but then something happened. The dots got connected. They all made sense.

So this morning we’re going to try and connect the dots of the Bible, so that the Bible, and most importantly, God, makes more sense to you and I.

I have to be honest with you. I’ve preached a version of this sermon before. I’ve pulled it back out this Christmas because last Christmas it changed how I view Christmas, and couldn’t remember it all, so I pulled it back out and read it again. It moved me deeply, and by reading it again, so more things became clear to me, so I decided to share those with you this morning.

Here’s the deal. The Bible is not first and foremost about the ten commandments, or rules, or laws. The Bible is not a list of do’s and don’ts. It’s not primarily about how to get to heaven when you die. It’s not about living a good, moral life. It’s not primarily about how to be happy or to live comfortably.

The Bible is primarily about relationships. It is primarily about our relationship with God and our relationship with each other (point towards mission – love God and love people). It’s about fallen, broken relationships, and it’s about God’s desire for good relationships because they bring heaven to earth (point toward vision – heaven on earth). So what we’re going to talk about today is broken relationships and the movement toward good relationships and we’re going to use four small words to help us.

Here’s a real shocker, the first word is found in Genesis. We spend a lot of time in Genesis because the early chapters of Genesis share with us the foundations of the world – of what’s good and what’s bad and what works and what doesn’t and who God is and who he isn’t. Here’s the verse.

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.      Genesis 1:27 (NRSV) 

Here is the first word. The word is “OF”. Small word, big truth. We were created of God.

I woodwork for a hobby. Once, I made a desk out of wood. The “OF” word means that my desk is a desk, but the properties that define it are, “It’s made OF wood”. We were created out of the image of God, of God, for God. We are meant to reflect his likeness, his goodness. God and us are not separate. We are different from God. But when people look at you and me they should get a glimpse of God, because that’s who you’re from. Does that make anyone nervous?

What’s the first word? OF

This is where the story begins for Adam and Eve. They are OF God. For any of you who have children, then you know how this all works. Your children are OF you, they are from you, they resemble you. When people look at them and get to know them, they get a glimpse of who you are, because they’re of you. It’s a very high level of relationship to be OF someone.

Adam and Eve actually knew God. They walked with him and talked with him in the cool of the day. They had this wonderful relationship with God. And it says at the end of Chapter 2 that they were naked and there was no shame. They had nothing to hide. They had nothing to be ashamed of. The first people on the earth had a great relationship with God. That’s how God created them to be. They were OF God and their relationship was good. It was how God created it to be. Heaven was on earth.

But if you know the story, then you know that being “OF” God was not enough for Adam and Eve. When Satan deceived Adam and Eve into believing that being “OF” God wasn’t enough, then their relationship with God and each other went to hell. Satan deceived the first human beings into believing that they could be like God. It was not enough for them to be “of” God, they wanted to BE God. They began to be self-centered instead of God-centered and this corrupted their goodness.

Now, God is a holy God, which means that he’s set apart from anything evil, and so when Adam and Eve began going their own way, they began to chose ways that were evil – ways that were not good – ways that were contrary to who God was. He couldn’t walk with them. They chose two different paths. God walked the path of righteousness – it’s the only path he would choose. Adam and Eve were on a different path that led away from God.  In that instant, Adam and Eve lost that intimacy and closeness with God. God could no longer walk and talk with Adam and Eve as he had before. And the rest of the Old Testament lives under a new word.

Let’s go to Exodus 33. We’re going to hop into the middle of the story of Moses, one of the central figures of the Old Testament. Of all the people in the Old Testament, few people had as close of a relationship with God as Moses did. Moses was able to meet with God in the tent of meeting and he had this honest, sometimes reluctant, relationship with God. Nobody in the Old Testament had a better relationship with God than Moses did.

He was one of the only people who got to see a tangible glimpse of the presence of God. We’re going to look at that right now.

Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And God said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. God is telling Moses, I can do whatever I want. I can show you mercy and I can give you grace, But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”

Very different from what Adam and Eve had in the Garden. There’s this idea throughout scripture that if someone looked at the face of God they would die. To see someone’s face is to see them. If someone moons you from the back of a bus, you probably can’t identify them. I’ve seen people in the mall or in town and I thought it was someone that I knew, but when they turned around and I saw their face, I realized it wasn’t them. To see someone’s face is to see them. To see the face of God was to see God and for all the people in the Old Testament, they could not know God because of the evil that was in them.

It’s kind of like when war veterans have an MRI  thinking that all the shrapnel from previous wounds have been removed. When they enter the MRI the shrapnel is attracted to the powerful magnets of the machine and sucked out of their bodies.

Moses and all of his counterparts could not see God and all his glory because of the evil in side of them. If there were to look upon God, all the evil inside of them would flee like the shrapnel inside a war vet and it would kill us. We would die!

And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.” Exodus 33:18?23 (NRSV) 

Can you see how things have changed? The relationship between God and Moses had to be at a distance. They could no longer walk and talk together. They were separated by this distance and by this thing called sin that was between them. God kept a safe distance from human beings not because he hated them for their wrong decisions, but because if they saw his face they would die, because their sin or evil inside of them would rip them apart spiritually when they looked God in the face

There’s this new word that enters the story after sin entered the world. This new word is AND. Say that with me, AND. God AND us. There’s a separation, there’s a distance. God is still present, but the relationship is no longer what it used to be. God did not leave us, but the relationship that we once had is no long possible because there is something between us. The closest that Moses could get was looking at the back of God, which means that Moses and others could not really know God. God is still here, but not like he was.

There ends up being this elaborate process in order for people to even get close to God, because there was so much mess inside of people that were not OF God. This is the effect of sin. God hasn’t left, but we can’t be as close to him as we once were.

For some of you , maybe this sums up the whole of your life. You know that God is out there somewhere, but you can’t see him, you can’t sense him, you can’t hear him. It’s as if he isn’t there, but something keeps telling you that he is. So it seems like he’s distant or far away. And I believe that is why people sometimes write or speak about God being up in heaven, instead of present because they’ve never really felt, or heard or saw God move.

This is what And is all about. God is here and we are here, but we are not in this deeply connected relationship with him. This is what Moses experienced, and this is what everybody in the Old Testament experienced. Throughout the Old Testament all the prophets were pointing to a new word, but nobody in their wildest dreams ever imagined what it would be like.

This word is so important that God uses it to describe who Jesus is. It’s found in Matthew Chapter 1 –the first book and the first chapter of the New Testament.

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God with us.” Matthew 1:23 (NRSV)  

What’s the third word? Anyone want to guess? Yeah, WITH. No longer is it God and us, but now it’s God with us. God says, I’m going to do something that is just going to blow your mind. I am going to be with you. This is really cool and while I was putting this message together for the first time, I realized that when Jesus came to this earth – when God was with us in the person of Jesus, we see something very close to what Adam and Eve experienced in the Garden of Eden, because God walked with Adam and Eve and now in Jesus he comes and is walking around with people again. In Jesus we get see, at least in part, God’s face. The scriptures tell us that now we see as though we are looking through dark glass.

Even though things are still really messed up, God has brought us back together again and he is with us. God has turned this titanic called sin and it’s headed back toward who he created us to be and he did it at Christmas when Jesus was born. The world is still really messed up, but God is doing something about it. In Jesus, God is saying that you could know God like nobody in the Old Testament ever could. That in Jesus, people can know God a bit like Adam and Eve could.

God says, now I am with you. There is no longer the separation, no longer the distance between God and us. This is what we celebrate at Christmas. That’s why it is so important that we pay attention to the message of Christmas, because God does something unthinkable at Christmas because he bridges the gap from And to With.

For my wife Shannon and I, this word “With” is very important. We spent one whole school year of our engagement apart.  Shannon was going to school at Michigan State and I was working as an electricians apprentice here and we couldn’t be with each other except on the weekends. In Shannon, I had found the woman of my dreams and I had spent enormous amounts of time with her and every hour that I had spent with her was the best hours of my life, and I had decided that I wanted to spend the rest of my life “With” her, but then she had to go back to school and I couldn’t be with her any more and it was absolutely not good. It was awful. It was a type of hell, but then when I got to be “With” her on the weekends everything was good – really, really good! Being WITH her changed my life. It changed our lives.

“With” is a very powerful word. We are with people all the time. The worst place to be is all alone – to not have anyone with you. That is a cursed place. God says in the person of Jesus, “you will never be alone, because I am with you. And we want to say as a church. We are with you. You never have to be alone, because we want to walk with you. That’s what life groups are about. They are groups of people who want to live life with each other because it is incredibly powerful experience.

When God came among us in the person of Jesus, what it means is that we can know him. In Jesus we know God at least in part. In Jesus we can see God’s face and we can know God. Maybe not fully, because in Jesus, God’s glory is cloaked under the skin of a human being, but in Jesus, we can see who we were created to be. In Jesus we know the truth about what life is about. It is about being with God and with other human beings.

But what the disciples couldn’t see was that God had in mind something even greater than “with” coming to our story. Because if you know the story at all, then you know it starts in a manger and it seems to end at a cross and a tomb, but it doesn’t end there. Jesus knew that he wouldn’t stay with us forever, but he had a plan and it was good.

If I had been one of Jesus’ followers, this would have been really hard for me to understand, because yeah, I get it now, I see that the kingdom of God has come down in Jesus and we don’t have to wait until we die to experience a bit of heaven on earth. And then Jesus says, I have to go now, but I’m going to send one that is even greater than me to you.

I’m no longer going to be with you, but I’m about to do something that you couldn’t even imagine. Something so much greater than just being WITH you.

Come with me to Col. 1:26. In this chapter, Paul goes on a rant about who Jesus Christ is, and I’d encourage you to read the whole chapter this afternoon or this week, because it is such a powerful image of who Jesus Christ really is. He goes on this rant and says, Just so you know, the fullness of God fully dwells in Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ everything was created, and by Jesus, all things are actually being held together. The very fabric of our existence is being held together by Jesus. He goes on to say that all things are not only being held together, but brought together. There being reconciled, fixed, healed by Jesus. After all this deep profound truth about who Jesus is, then he says the absolute unthinkable in the first century and maybe for you and I today – he says this:

The mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been disclosed to God’s people. There’s a mystery, a secret almost, something that nobody had any idea about. To them (God’s People) God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is drum roll please Christ in you, the hope of glory. Col. 1:26?27

Paul says all these things about Jesus, but then the punch line of this whole rant is that Jesus can live IN you. God can live in you. This does not mean that you or I are God – very different! But since God can’t walk around in person with each one of us like he did in the garden with Adam and Eve and talk with us in the cool of the day, instead, God wants to live in us.

What makes this possible is that in the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross, God paid the price for our sins – God removes our sins when we desire to be reconciled with him. God removes our sins when we seek to love him. Jesus died for all people, but only those who accept him receive the free gift that he gave on the cross. The reason why God can come inside of us is because when we accept Jesus and choose to love God and decide that we want to be in relationship with him, then Jesus removes our sin and that clears out the inside of us so that God’s Spirit can enter.

The whole message of Jesus is that God wants to clean you and I out, so that we can be in relationship with him. God wants to enter our lives and begin to direct and guide us in such a way that we begin our journey back toward being OF him. Jesus’s plan is not for it to be us AND God, it’s not for it to be God with us, and it’s not even to be God in us. God’s plan us to live as we were created to be where we can understand that we were created to be OF God, living face to face in deep, personally relationship with our Creator, in such a way that Heaven comes to earth. That can only as we seek to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, so that God’s love is in us guiding back toward who he created us to be.

There are 4 small words OF, AND, WITH, and IN that display the movement of our relationship with God in the Bible. Where are you at? What word describes your relationship with God?

Does AND describe your relationship with God the best? Is your relationship with God distant? Do you pray to God like he’s “In heaven” somewhere? Do you feel to small for God to really be a part of your life? If this is true then you’re living in the past, in the Old Testament. You don’t have to live there anymore, because Jesus came and died, so that God could be in you and so that his love could fill you, and move you more towards heaven on earth.

Does WITH describe your relationship with God? With is a better place to be than AND, but it’s still not all that good. Is God with you as you go throughout your day? Is God an external factor that you call on when your day or your relationships aren’t going well? WITH describes God on the outside of us, so our world is still quite self-centered with God on the outside helping out. This is the place where many Christians are. They’re still at Christmas – God with us, but Christmas is not the end of Jesus’ story.

Does IN describe your relationship with God. God is no longer with you, but in you. God is not some external factor, but at the very core of who you are. You are no longer totally self-centered, but you’re journeying toward becoming God centered. It is no longer about your will, but God’s will. Your life is no longer characterized by your selfish desires, but, rather, is characterized by what God desires. This type of relationship is characterized by a strong desire to be OF God. You’re not there yet, but on good days you can see the kingdom of God – you can see what heaven on earth would look like and you deeply long for that – You deeply long for all relationships to be good, for the world to be good again – You deeply long to be OF God, so that all relationships – our relationship with God and our relationship with each other would be good. 

Song: “In Me” by Casting Crowns – Life Song album.