82.
Our God Don't Play
I would like to summarize Francis Chan’s great sermon, When
God Doesn’t Listen. Here’s praying you get as much out of
it as I did.
God is a lot more serious about sin than I am. But I don’t want to be in a
middle ground between God and where the worldly culture is; I want to stand
where He is. I want to warn people, ‘This is where He is.’ I want all
that boldness.
When you read I John, you can see the seriousness. God says, “I don’t care
if you say you know Me…if you don’t obey my commands, you’re a liar…You can’t
love the things of the world, and also have the love of the Father in you…You
can’t say you love God if you hate your brother whom you can see…you can’t keep
going on sinning if you’re really a believer…you’re not a real believer.”
This is so radically different, let’s just start reading Scripture
afresh. Every sentence Jesus says, let’s take it literally. Most of
the seminarians say, “Well, He didn’t really mean that literally.” But
read the book of Luke, fresh, and say, “If He really means this, what would my
life look like if I took this literally?” In our church culture, we
soften things to our liking. But God is not that way.
When I look at church in America, let’s face it, there are so many people
who will only participate if everything is just right. You got to have
the right speaker, the right music, the right programs; and on Sunday, it has
to be the right time of day, it can’t be too long, and there better be
something good going on for the kids. And I want the people to be exactly
like me, whose personalities I enjoy. But are we playing a game here? God
is more intense than games; when Scripture says ‘fear God,’ it really means
fearing God. When people advise us to pray, they say to just talk to Him,
say whatever you want to say. But I don’t see that in Scripture.
Ecclesiastes tells us to “guard yourselves as you approach God.” Don’t
make hasty vows; God’s going to hold you to them and deal with you not
fulfilling them.
Truth is, sometimes talking to God is a waste of time--God isn’t listening
to you. God is actually disgusted by some of the prayers, or by some of
your activities.
I had this guy who says his wife and he weren’t getting along; he had
another job opportunity, so he was going to leave his wife and family—so he
asks me, would you pray with me that I would just have a great new start?
And I go, “you gotta be kidding me right now, I’m not going to pray for
you.” Look at I Peter 3:7:
Husbands, likewise, live with them with understanding,
giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and
as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers
may not be hindered.
Husbands, you treat her as a precious vessel, you protect her, you love her,
you honor her…so that your prayers won’t be hindered. God is saying,
“That’s My daughter right there, so you better treat her the right way, or I’m
not going to listen to you.”
One time we asked for prayer for healing, and a guy approached us for that.
Later he said, “I’m living with this girl.” So, sir, you claim to be a
Christian and yet you’re sleeping around with this woman? Let me ask you
this: If you were doing this with one of my daughters, would you have the
nerve to come up to me and ask me for a favor? No. And you want me
to join you in prayer? No; you should repent. He is an awesome God,
and will forgive. But God’s not going to listen to you right now.
Consider James 4:3:
You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss,
that you may spend it on your pleasures.
This life is not all about us.
We’re a created being; we were created for Him.
We should ask God, “What do You want me to do?” Look at James 1:6-8:
But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is
like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For
let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he
is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
If you have unconfessed sin, you may doubt
that God is listening. If He is disapproving, you may not receive anything from
your prayers. Such a person is double-minded. One eye on God, one on the
world’s sin that he likes.
Is there anything better than answered prayer? When you ask for something
specific, and it actually happens! And it couldn’t have been just
circumstance, it was supernatural. Isn’t that an awesome feeling?
“I actually talked to God—and He heard me all the way from heaven; out of seven
billion people. He did it!”
But people have strange ways of doing things. In Isaiah 58:5-9, people
were fasting and praying, wearing sackcloth and ashes, so they could feel like
asking God for favor. His response was:
Is it a fast that I have chosen, A day for a man to afflict
his soul?
Is it to bow down his head like a
bulrush, And to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a
fast, And an acceptable day to the Lord? 6 “(But here is)
the fast that I choose: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy
burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke. 7 Is
it not to share your bread with the hungry, And
that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the
naked, that you cover him, And not hide yourself from your own flesh?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the morning,
Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go
before you; The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 9 Then
you shall call, and the Lord will answer; You shall cry, and He will
say, ‘Here I am.
Do you think you’re going to suit up and bow before me, and think, “Ooh,
what a humble guy I am.” Verse 6 shows what God really wants them to fast
about. That they would share their possessions with people in need, and
not look down on them. Then He would say, when you cry out, “Here I am.”
Then He would listen—and satisfy your needs. But it’s conditional. As James
5:16b says:
The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
A righteous man.
Getting back to God’s seriousness, turn to
Joshua 7. God had commanded Israel to destroy everything when they conquer the
Amorites, but one man, Achan, didn’t—he kept some of the “accursed
things.” What’s interesting in Scripture is, “the anger of the Lord
burned against the children of Israel.” That means He was angry with All
of them—over the sin of one man. God allowed them to lose 36 men in a
lost battle by retracting His favor. What does God say when Joshua asks Him, “Why!?”
Verses 10-13, in part:
10 So
the Lord said to Joshua: “Get up! Why do you lie thus on your
face? 11 Israel has sinned… Neither
will I be with you anymore, unless you destroy the accursed from among you.
So God allowed 36 men to die because of the sin of another man; and He even
swore to abandon His people. We find in verses 20ff that Achan did admit
to his sin, keeping spoils of a piece of clothing and silver and gold, but he
and his children were still stoned to death! Only then was God willing to
“turn from the fierceness of His anger.”
As Rev. Chan tells it, “Now you’re thinking, “that’s not fair,” but try to
learn God's way. I turn to God and admit, ‘I’m not as serious about this
as You are, God.’ You wanted a purity among Your people, so much so that
You would go that far…and the moment the sin was outside the camp, Your
blessing returned to it.”
How serious are we about the purity of our place in the church today?
Remember Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira? They spoke a pretense, a lie, that
they gave all the money to the church on a sale of land, when in fact they had
kept back some (Ed: note that the sin was lying, not that they didn’t give
every penny to the church). But God struck both of them dead! They just
collapsed. Scripture says in v.11,
…great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard
these things.
Fear of God is good. My God don’t
play.
Many of you have a problem here, saying, “He can’t have such a high
standard.” So you might have a problem with Hell, and with Him at the
Flood. But these are about God’s seriousness about purity, and how
sometimes He won’t listen to our prayers for a rosy path. God gave us His
Spirit so if we call on Him in time of temptation, He will help, and we can
indeed live up to that standard. But we have to call for help. You
can’t be unrepentant. We have a part we have to play in
sanctification. Just as He asked Joshua to help remove the sinner, He
today asks His church to purge the unrepentant sinner from our gatherings. See
Matthew 18:15.
There is a particular sentiment expressed by Mr. Chan that I would like to
emphasize. We’ll see it in I Corinthians 5:9-13:
I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually
immoral people. 10 Yet I certainly did not mean with
the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or
extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the
world. 11 But now I have written to you not to keep
company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or
covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not
even to eat with such a person… Do you not judge those
who are inside? 13 But those who are outside God judges.
Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.”
Mr. Chan makes a good point when he says, many of us were taught wrong on
this. We ARE supposed to judge…but those who are inside
the church, who call themselves Christian, when we see a serious sin (Ed:
Sometimes, we are not sure what is a sin. Homosexuality is: Matthew 19. Please
also read Rom. 14 for not judging in “disputable matters.” By the way, seances,
adultery, etc are not disputable—they are occult). We are not supposed to
judge those who don’t call themselves Christians.
“The church has got it backwards. We keep judging, Ooh, the evil world
out there, the evil world…God says ‘Stop that! I asked you to look in your own
midst, and get serious about the purity of the church, and get those defiant
people out of there. I don’t want someone who is taking the name of Christ, and
living that sinful way…and you shouldn’t want that either.” Look at Titus
3:10-11a:
Reject (have nothing more to do with) a divisive man after the
first and second admonition,
11 knowing
that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned.
Confront him in love. Say, “It’s not just about you…you hurt us…When
you got baptized, you joined the family here. My sin can have an impact on your
life; and your sin impacts me—and sin could impact our prayer.” What’s the
first word of the Lord’s Prayer? The word "our." It is
about us as a family. There ought to be family love. In today’s world, “unity,”
staying and doing things together, is ‘weird.’ Everyone likes to drift
off, meet up with friends from their phone. Why not let the world see
something different? True family should stay together.
Also, you’re living double lives if we hold something back from someone you
profess to love.
As you can see, Mr. Chan holds a strong view on discipline within the
church. Praise God. Unfortunately, what often happens is, those people
simply change churches, rather than searching within their hearts.
God is more serious than letting us let these things slide. Our God
Don’t Play.
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