Printer Friendly Version“What does God want from me?” That may be one of
the most important questions we could ever ask. When it comes right down to
it, what does God really want from me? If you pay attention to popular culture
at all, it becomes quite evident people have all kinds of answers to the question.
Some people seem to think if you’re just doing your best, that’s
all God really expects.
I was fascinated by the reasoning of actress Sophia Loren in
an interview a couple of years ago. When asked about her religious convictions
she said,
I don’t practice, but I pray. I read the Bible. I should
go to heaven; otherwise it's not nice. I haven't done anything wrong. My conscience
is very clean. My soul is as white as those orchids over there, and I should
go straight, straight to heaven. (USA Today, 1999)
Well, many of the people I talk with don’t seem quite
so confident. In fact, many seem to believe no matter how they may try, they
can just never quite measure up. And in truth we really can’t “measure
up.” We heard last week in the passage from Leviticus what God’s
standard for us is all about. Remember?
“Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy”
(Leviticus 19:1). And Jesus didn’t ease the requirement, in fact He
almost makes it sound worse: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly
Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). So who’s ready to go and get
in the front of that line? During these weeks we are thinking about the holiness
of heart and life to which God calls us. But who can be holy? Isn’t
“holy” a word that only belongs to God?
And who can be, to use Jesus’ word, perfect? One of the
things we like to say the most to explain our foul-ups is, “Well, nobody’s
perfect.”
“All of us occasionally do what is right. [Some] predominately
do what is right. But do any of us always do what is right?” (Max Lucado).
The apostle Paul in Romans says, “There is no one righteous, not even
one" (Romans 3:10).
It would be a lot better if we could just compare ourselves
with each other instead of with God. That way the spiritual standard becomes,
“Can I live at least as well as most folks? Can I be better than average?”
But what we’re hearing is the standard we have to answer to is a lot
tougher than, “How do I compare to you?” The standard is the very
character of a holy God himself. Who can stand up to that?
Thomas Aquinas, a great theologian many centuries ago, created
one of the greatest intellectual achievements of western civilization. He
wrote a massive work called Summa Theologica. His goal was to gather into
one coherent whole work all of truth. How’s that for an undertaking?
He was a brilliant man. He wrote in the disciplines of anthropology, science,
ethics, political theory, and theology.
But in 1273 Thomas suddenly stopped his writing. He was in worship
one day when he caught an unusual glimpse of the “otherness” and
holiness of God. And suddenly he knew all his efforts to describe God fell
so far short he decided never to write again. His secretary tried to encourage
him to do more writing, but he said, "I can do no more. Such things have
been revealed to me that all I have written seems as so much straw."
He didn’t write another word and died a year later.
Who can stand up to the perfection and beauty and righteousness
and truth and holiness of God? Not me. Not you. And yet God says, “Be
holy, like I am holy.” And so across time, the story of God’s
relationship with His people is often a rather sad tale of people struggling
to measure up, working hard to figure out how in the world we can possibly
be found acceptable in the sight of a God like that.
The writer of Hebrews is speaking to a people who knew that
story very well. They are part of a tradition in which their ancestors had
received God’s call to be holy and along with that call received the
law that essentially said, this is what “holy” looks like.
The law set the standard. The Ten Commandments and all of the
requirements coming out of the commandments stood as a constant condemnation
to a people who were never able to discipline themselves into holiness.
So we see God’s grace in giving them the chance to come
before Him with sacrifices and offerings, they might recognize God’s
holiness, recognize their sinful condition, and receive forgiveness from God.
And for centuries that’s how it worked. Year after year, as the text
says, the sacrifices of the old system were repeated. People made their pilgrimage
to the temple to offer their sacrifice.
It really was a grace but it was also a burden because as the
passage says, these sacrifices were never able to provide perfect cleansing
for those who came to worship. If they could have provided perfect cleansing,
the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been purified
once for all time, and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared. But
just the opposite happened. Those yearly sacrifices reminded them of their
sin year after year. For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats
to take away sins (Hebrews 10:1-4, NLT).
Now here’s the connection. We no longer live under the
old covenant. We obviously don’t sacrifice bulls and goals in an effort
to please God and find relief of our guilt. But even now, we can so easily
carry that same mindset with us into our relationship with God. And even though
we know forgiveness is through faith in Jesus, some of us still believe we
can never measure up.
All of us no matter how spiritually mature probably experience
those times once in a while. The real tragedy is some Christians live there
all of their lives. Maybe you live there. We can become so convinced we can
never measure up we live in a constant state of accusation and guilt before
God. God says, “be holy.” Jesus says, “be perfect”
and we throw up our hands in defeat. There are a lot of people who think Christianity
is nothing more than a constant reminder you’re not good enough. Too
many people leave church every Sunday feeling only condemned and undone, never
moving to grace and forgiveness. Many have given up on church altogether.
There was an interesting report in USA Today this week about
the increasing “unfaith” of America. The article said that according
to research, 14 percent of Americans now claim no religion at all, up from
8 percent in 1990. In the western states it’s more like 25 percent.
One young man featured in the story said he does attend a Baptist church once
in a while in order to, as he put it, “get back in rhythm with God.”
But he went on to say, “I totally understand my friends who hate church
or think it's boring or react negatively because of the formalities and customs.
They think it's strange, stuffy, weird, and ritualistic.”
People have given up because they think God is nothing more
than a crotchety old man with a list of rules you can’t keep and then
He’ll just get mad at you when you can’t keep them! Who needs
that?
That way of thinking is really not much different than what
the writer of Hebrews is talking about here. “Today we don't literally
sacrifice animals, but we are equally caught up in our own kinds of ‘sacrificial
practices.’ And they are just as repetitive, just as desperate, sometimes.
We work hard to become good, or acceptable, or successful. We pride ourselves
in our accomplishments that we've earned through our ‘blood, sweat and
tears’” (Tom Long).
Just like our spiritual ancestors we try to bring sacrifices
with us. Lord, didn’t I do this and that? Didn’t I serve you and
sacrifice for you and work hard in the church? But it’s never enough.
You can’t “do” enough to earn God’s favor.
“So we keep our distance from the holy of holies, leave
with a guilty conscience, and come back next week with another basket of good
intentions to place upon the altar” (Long).
“What does God want from me?” That’s the question.
And the answer this preacher wants to give to the Hebrew Christians is, “God
does not want you to live under that endless drudgery.” God is not interested
in making us play some elaborate religious game where He sets a standard we
can never achieve but kill ourselves trying to achieve.
Yes, God does say to us “be holy.” And yes, God
did create us to be holy--which simply means to be like Him and live in relationship
with Him. But God knows what happened to us. He knows sin entered the world.
God understands we are not able to get ourselves back to the way He created
us to be at first. So God in His grace did for us what we could not do for
ourselves. And that’s this book of Hebrews is all about. That’s
what this chapter especially is about. When we were caught in a never-ending
cycle of religious sacrifice, God provided the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.
He gave us His Son. The good news here is the never-ending cycle
of guilt sacrifices has been broken, it’s over. “Jesus placed
His own faithful life on the altar on behalf of us all, and it was enough.”
This was in the heart of God all along. He said through the
prophet Jeremiah, “The time is coming when I will make a new covenant
with them. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts”
(31:31, 33).
God never intended for you to live your life in a futile attempt
to be pleasing to Him. God’s desire for you was to bring you home. And
that’s why Jesus came and made the journey to Jerusalem. Jesus did not
die to make you morally flawless. He died to make you holy. Big difference.
Moral perfection is about adherence to the law. Holiness is about a heart
of love.
Jesus does not desire from you moral conservatism. His desire
is to give you a pure heart. Jesus does not desire from you attempts to think
positive and overcome the hurts of the past. His desire is to give you true
freedom from the past. He doesn’t want your acts of service, He wants
your heart to be so changed you care passionately about people and serve them
from a heart of love. He doesn’t just want your disciplined devotional
life. He wants to spend time with you as a Friend who not only loves you,
He really likes you! He delights in you. He loves being with you. That’s
the heart of Jesus. And that’s the heart that Jesus desires. A holy
heart. Jesus understood what God wanted.
Hebrews 10:10 says it so simply and so well. “What God
wants is for us to be made holy by the sacrifice (not that we bring, but the
sacrifice) of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time” (NLT).
Elton Trueblood said, “The chief way you and I are disloyal
to Christ is when we make small what he intended to make large.”
Loved ones, don’t underestimate what God wants to do for
you. Jesus did not die just to forgive and forgive and forgive a life of continuous
failure and sin. Jesus died to make you holy. And if you will open your heart
fully to Him and release all your own effort to be pleasing to God--He will
fill your heart with His spirit and He will make you holy.
That is what God wants from you.
