Word of Salvation – Vol. 48 No.21 – June 2003

 

The Basis of A Good Relationship with God

 

Sermon by Rev W Wiersma

on 1 John 1

Scripture Readings:  Matthew 6:19-24; John 1:1-8

 

Dear Congregation, boys and girls, young people, older ones.

Today I want to speak to you on the subject of THE BASIS OF A GOOD RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD.

What is the basis, what is the starting point of a good relationship with God? And by relationship with God we mean trust in God and a real desire to follow His advice and to do His will. I want to talk about this because I believe that many of us are confused on this matter. We think we know but we're not sure. And because we are not sure what the real basis of a good relationship with God is, we wonder if we actually HAVE a relationship with God at all.

You see, we may TALK religious talk; we may TALK about God and we may TALK about Jesus and grace and all the things that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ talks about, but it's possible that for all our talk we are not SURE about these things. We are like children who are not sure whether they are really loved by their parents. They're not sure whether they can really trust their parents because they get confusing signals.

They're told, for instance, that they are loved. And they know that they are fed, that they are clothed and they're educated. But sometimes they get the feeling that they can only be loved if they are absolutely perfect in their behaviour. And they are constantly told that they are not perfect. Sometimes they are even told that they are useless and hopeless. Such kids are confused. They wonder, "do my parents love me or don't they? They SAY they do, but it doesn't look that way or feel like that to me."

I think many of us feel like that about God. We are not sure. We are not absolutely convinced that He loves us and that He will never, ever abandon us; never turn against us. We feel like that because we have been getting confusing signals. Not so much from God, but from people like ministers and parents who speak about God.

So I want to talk about the question - What is the basis of a good relationship with God? And I might add that if we get that right it might do our families a lot of good, too.

So, what is the beginning of a good relationship with God? Does it, for instance, depend in the first place on how we behave? Is it a matter of listening and learning to find out exactly all we have to know and all we have to do? Is that how a good relationship with God is started, or built up? Just try your best to be good Christians and eventually, with much prayer and help from God, you will get there. Eventually God will say, "Now you've got there. Now you are as good as I want you to be."

I think that's the way many of us really feel. Even if we have been told again and again, and even if we theoretically know that's all wrong. But it's still how we feel, it's still how we live. We keep hearing, "You have failed. You are not good enough."

Some of us think that the starting point of the basis of a good relationship with God is election - the sovereign electing love of God. But that doesn't give us much real peace, does it? Because how do you know that you are among the elect? You might be looking for signs, little assurances that God has chosen YOU, but when you see those signs, are you just kidding yourself? Are you just talking yourself into believing, like sick people talk themselves into believing that they will get better and hoping that that will actually make them better?

Let's have a look at what the apostle John has to say about this question. What is the starting point for us, for you, for me, of having a good relationship with God? A relationship of love, and peace and real security.

John tells us what he, as one of the disciples of Jesus, heard and saw in the three years that they were with Jesus. He said, "I pass this on to you, what I have seen and what I have heard. And I pass this on to you so that you may have fellowship with us, so that you may be one with us and enjoy what we, the disciples, enjoyed."

And what is that? It's our fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. So he is saying, "We are in fellowship with God the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ, and we want YOU to have a part in that fellowship also, in that fellowship with God, in that relationship with God."

Now, John tells us how that relationship that he had with God, and that the disciples had with God, how that relationship came into being, how that developed, how that started and what that involves. He says the starting point was all in what we saw and heard. It started with what we saw and heard. He says that what we heard and saw was the Word of Life to us. It was the Word which came from God, the Word which gives light and life to men, to human beings.

John was, of course, talking about the Lord Jesus. He said, "I heard, I saw, I touched Jesus, the Word from God, the Word of Life." The Word of God "which became flesh", as John says in his gospel. But John goes further and he narrows what he, with the other disciples, had seen and heard from Jesus. He puts it all very succinctly, in a nutshell, as it were. He says, "This is the message that we heard, the message that we gathered from all that Jesus said and did and taught." And what was that message? "That God is light - there is no darkness in God at all."

Now, I do not know, I am not sure, about all that God is saying to us, through the apostle John, about Himself when he says that God is light and that there is no darkness in Him at all. I think that that is something that we will have to learn to appreciate and to enjoy as we grow and deepen in our relationship with God.

God is Light. But that must surely mean that God is GOOD, and that God is CARING. Surely that is what the life and teaching of Jesus tells us about God. Jesus says that His own birth, His coming into this world was due to the goodness of God. Jesus talks about it in John 3. He said to Nicodemus, a religious expert whose eyes and mind still had to be opened, who was, as far as the things of the kingdom of God were concerned, blind as a bat - Jesus said to him, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. Because God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but God sent His Son into the world to SAVE the world through Him."

God sent Jesus because He is GOOD. And there you have the starting point of a good relationship with God, the possibility of communion with God for sinners, for imperfect people. The starting point is nothing other than the love of God. Yes, the love of God.

The beginning of a genuine relationship with God is what GOD has done and what GOD has given. It lies in the heart of God. The starting point is Jesus. Not what YOU have done. Not what YOU or I have to do. Not your church attendance. Not your Bible reading. Not your prayers. They are not the beginning of a relationship with God, between God and you. The starting point, the basis of it all, is Jesus - it is the love of God that changes everything. That is, if our eyes are open to it, if our heart is receptive to the fact that God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all.

God is love. That's the starting point. That's the basis. Jesus said - I wasn't sent for the righteous. I wasn't sent to bring the acceptable into the presence of God. I didn't come for people who have it all together. No, I came for the sick, the broken, the lost. I was sent to save sinners. Because God loves, God cares about sinners. God cares about everybody, yes, everybody.

God is our creator. He is our sustainer. We live by His care, by His providing gifts, every day. Rain and sunshine are God's gifts, according to Jesus. To ALL human beings. God makes His rain to fall upon the just AND the unjust. He gives His sunshine to believers and unbelievers alike. Jesus' teaching and His behaviour tell us that God cares about EVERYBODY. And he cares about you.

To grasp that, to accept that - that's the starting point - that God cares about YOU, whoever you are, whatever you are, whatever you have done up till now - God cares about YOU. Whatever your circumstances might be, God cares about you.

There was no one Jesus turned away from and said, "I won't have any thing to do with you." There is no one that God turns away from and says, "I'll never have anything to do with you." God cares for everyone. God cares about you. For God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. God is open. God tells the truth. And His grand motive is always love.

That's the light which the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, beams into this world. God is light and God ALWAYS acts in love for ALL that He has made. That's the light which God gives to anyone who will receive it.

That's the beginning of finding peace with God. Accepting that God is light, that God cares about you, that God wants the best for you. Accepting that message in a world which is under the power of the evil one, under the influence of the devil, the father of lies, that acceptance is the beginning of being brought back into touch with God.

Let me ask you, how was man's peace with God destroyed? How was the fellowship with God broken in Paradise? Wasn't that when the devil suggested that God couldn't be trusted? And Adam and Eve believed that!

Isn't that what opened the pandora box of all evils? It was when Adam and Eve listened to the dark message of the evil one that God is not light, God is two-faced, God cannot be trusted, God is not telling you everything. That's what the devil said to Adam and Eve. He said that God is scared that you will become as powerful as He is. God is scared of competition. And that is why He commands you not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

That is the beginning, the starting point of being at odds with God - believing the lie. It's living in the darkness of the grand lie that there is darkness in God, there is duplicity in God. That is how unbelievers understand God and interpret everything God does. That is why they ask, if God is so good why does He allow so much evil and pain in this world? Obviously implying God is not good - there is darkness in God.

"If we claim to have fellowship with God," says John, "yet walk in the darkness - if we don't believe God - we lie and do not live by the truth." The beginning of finding peace with God is to believe and accept Jesus, the gift of God's love. That is true for anybody, for every sinner. The door into God's presence is only Jesus.

Accept God's love for you. Don't say He must do this first and He must change my circumstances in that regard - don't try and tell God what to do. Accept His love gift. Look at and accept Jesus.

I want to close with just a few verses from that same letter, a few chapters further - 1 John 4 verses 9 and 10: "This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into this world so that we might live through Him. This is Love: not that WE loved God, but that HE loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

God loves us as we are. He accepts us as we are, and as we accept His love He deals with our sins. HE takes care of our sins. If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another - with God and with each other - and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin. The beginning of a good relationship with God is letting HIM love you and letting HIM deal with your sins, because He loves you, in spite of the fact that you are imperfect.

God says, " I myself have provided for all your imperfections - My Son."

You see, the question is, do you accept that God loves you? Until you accept that, you are in the dark. If you accept it then you are in the light and you have life - a life that will go on developing, joy, peace and love - a life that will never, ever be destroyed.

Amen.

PRAYER

Lord God, we are such arrogant beings - we want to take so much credit for ourselves. We find it hard, Oh God, to let go of all our desire to have things in our control - to be, as it were, the captains of our own lives - and to let you be our God, our lover, our care-giver, our provider. Lord, we come to you in all our weakness, our confusion, our hurt, and we ask, Lord, take us in.

Thank you that you have shown us that you love us - that we have the proof of it in Jesus. May we trust Him and, through accepting Him, know that we are the beloved children of God. Thank you, Lord.

Amen.