6. Individual Recordings/relational_christianity

My goodness, it's great to be with you today. I've had a ball. I haven't had this much fun in the Baptist church since I can remember. It's really fun to be with you. Fun to be here and flew in earlier this week and spent a couple of days with some old friends and get to be with you today. I just usually sneak in places I go to. I don't like to be known as the Bible conference speaker or the out-of-town author or any of that kind of stuff. I'm really diswaying and I like to be known that way. I love to come in among a crowd and just get to know people, talk to people, ask them questions about stuff when they don't know who I am. I didn't work here today. Everybody that heard Wayne went, oh yeah, the speaker. Wonderful. Next time I try another name, Peter or John or something, I make that work. The reason I do is once people put me in that speaker slash pastor slash author box, they're not the same around me as they are if I'm just another person. Now they measure their words a little more and they don't want to bore me with stuff that I love being bored with. I want to know about your kids. I want to know what you do for a living. I want to know how God's working himself out in the reality of everyday life. Because that's where Jesus came to work it out. He didn't come to work it out here for this hour in this room. Maybe some things happen in this hour in this room to help us live it out there. But the point is He wants to be part of our lives every moment of every day with our children, with our marriages, with our hobbies, with our work, with our play. He wants to be part of all that with us. And so I enjoy getting to know people at that level and hopefully in a few days I can break down whatever box you have, whatever author might have offended you in the pastor, said something rude to you at an airport or something and get out of that box and we can just be the people of God together. I get to travel all over the world and meet God's people in every location imaginable. I've been to Albania and India and Nepal and Singapore and Australia and France and Wales and all over. I've been all over the US and I have yet to be to a place where I didn't meet some of God's kids. Some of God's people that are learning to love Him, live in Him, be transformed by Him. So I'm thrilled to be with you today and I'm going to be more thrilled when I get out of that author speaker box thing. But that author speaker box thing that I sometimes live in with a new crowd that I'm with, particularly I come to churches or seminaries who've been using my book The Naked Church as a textbook. And they're always ready to take me apart. They think they know me because they read my book. I sometimes surprise them but they're always ready for their conception of who I am. And so I understand the author box thing and I really understand the God box thing. I think God had a really hard time for a long time being known with us as He wanted to be known with us. Whenever God made Himself known in the Old Testament after the fall, amazing things happened, didn't it? And people didn't usually respond with, hey God, how are you? We're usually falling on their faces and tears and pain and agony. When God's Spirit fell on Mount Sinai and lightning and thunder and earthquakes and people, Moses had called to the mountain. God wants to talk to us. Come here. God comes down the mountain with all that special effects. And they were saying, uh-oh, we don't want anything to do with that. So Moses, you go up there and let Him tell you and then you tell us and we'll do whatever you say. That was a wonderful thing to promise. You know the children of Israel, they didn't often do what Moses told them to do. What Moses told them that God said to do. When I just saw him from the cleft of the rock that we sang about a little bit this morning after. He passes by and God says, don't look just to my back. Just get a glimpse of my back as I come by. Isaiah has a vision. He falls on his face. I'm a worthy man that I am, a man of uncleanness. Now we think that God's, and I use that as a small G, God's that men create the idols, the false religions that have populated our world since time immemorial. And some of those things we've ascribed to our God, the living God, the true God. We think God's like to be scary. And I like to scare the dickens out of us to keep us straight. Distance, I mean if God by a breath spoke worlds into existence. Not exactly the kind of guy you'd sit down over coffee with and have a chat. Except that God has desired nothing more. That's the creation of the world, sit down over coffee with you and have a chat. God wanted to be with us and know us for who we really are and be known in him as he really is. But the fact that he's the God guy, and we're following humanities made that very, very difficult. Until God surprised us. He did it in Bethlehem. Came in the form of a little baby. No one fell down screaming about their sins in English. No one ran from him saying, oh get him away from us, we're not worthy, we're not worthy. God in Christ snuck in among us. We didn't know who he was. But we beheld his glory and he grew up as a young boy in Nazareth. The deriding chant of that day was, can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Now it's can any good thing come out of California. I sense that. Animosity and by some of you people of less spiritual depth than we have down here. He snuck up on us in Nazareth. He snuck up on us. As he walked the hills of Galilee and sometimes the waves of Galilee. Oh his disciples knew he was a man of God. They knew he was a man uniquely empowered and gifted by God. You couldn't hear him teach and not know that. You couldn't watch him heal lepers or raise that dead girl or calm the ocean storm and not know. This is a man in whom God uniquely divides. This is a man uniquely gifted. But did they think him to be? Did they know him to be God in human flesh? The answer is they didn't. Not so after the resurrection. We are going in these days to talk about vine living. What it means to live in the vine. Jesus on the last night of his life in his physical body on this earth before the cross. Had some moments with his disciples in an upper room and then from there on to a garden called Gethsemane. And perhaps even on the way to that garden pausing in a vineyard. He began to tell his last parable, the parable of the vineyard. I am the vine and my father is the vine dresser of the gardener of the farmer. And you are the branches. And unless you remain in me, you can't bear much fruit. We heard part of it read this morning. We're going to talk about it tonight in the next two nights together. Three nights in a row. We're going to talk about why did he choose that parable? Why did he take us to that point to help us understand the unique relationship he wants with every one of us? But before we get to that passage, I want to set up for it. I want to look a little bit at John chapter 14. Because what's happening in this, what we call the upper room discourse, the last words of Jesus with his disciples. What's happening is he has been with them now and the timing is not clear. Some scholars say two and a half to three, four, maybe five years. We're not sure that Jesus was with his disciples before the cross. But he's been with them. They've been comfortable with him. He's been a friend of theirs. They've walked along the road together. They've laughed together when they needed to pay taxes. Jesus told them to go catch a fish and find some money in there to pay taxes. Every April 14th, I go looking for that fish. That could not be the biggest fishing day in the world. But I haven't caught them yet. I've never opened a fish and found money. Peter hadn't either. But boy, on that day, I found money to pay the taxes. Cool. They'd walked with him. They'd said the stupidest stuff to him. Stuff like when this Americans made fun of him. Is it now that we call down fire from heaven and burn him up? Well, these are great guys. These were sharp guys. We'll talk more about these guys down the road because they're just like you and me. We've got to know that. When we make them the twelve apostles, the disciples of Jesus, they suddenly turn into something holy and weird and spooky that has no relationship to us. They were fishermen. They were tax-gatherers. One was probably even a bomb. Jesus found him sitting under the tree. Didn't say he did anything. He was a street guy or something. And Jesus finds Nathaniel and he says, You want to come? Sure. I'll come. That was good to me. He chose people like us. Mary and Martha and Lazarus and Magdalene. They said, Come follow me. And people hung out with him. Had dinner with him. What about dinner? No, Martha comes in. Jesus takes his head. Don't you get it? We're having more fun out here than you're having in there. There. It's okay. But who's going to fix the food? It doesn't matter. We eat and argue. It's not going to matter, really. Something good is going on. They just became a friend. They did dumb stuff together. They laughed together. They struggled together. And he got to know them as people and they want to fight with him. It wasn't the holy God they were afraid of. It was Jesus, their friend. Now in the upper room, Jesus knows that the disguise is about to come off. He's lived among them as a man and they've only known him to be a man. And even when Peter confessed that he was the Christ, the son of the living God, this is the Messiah. They didn't know the Messiah was God incarnate. There's nothing in the Jewish hope, in 1st century Judaism, of the Messiah that he would be, God in the flesh. They could not even conceive of Yahweh in human flesh. Oh, they thought the Messiah would be a man of God, certainly a unique man, like a Moses, empowered by God to do God's stuff. So even when they said he's the Messiah, they didn't understand him to be. God in flesh sitting down to a cup of coffee, a glass of wine. Where's your Baptist? Okay. A glass of welchers. Okay. This was God. And no comprehension. And because they didn't, God got to have in Christ with them the relationship he has always wanted since the creation of the world. He got to be their friend. And they were his. And they talked together. And they learned together. And they laughed together. He bawled them out for dumb stuff they said. And they grew up together. And they loved and they had this incredible relationship with God but only because they had no idea who was. So in John chapter 14, 15, 16, 17, the Mass is about to come off. Jesus is now within 18 hours of being crucified on the cross. He's within three days of being resurrected from the dead. And now when he's with them again after the resurrection, they're going to know this is no Moses type guy. This was no Elijah type guy. This was God in the flesh. He did not want to lose with them the relationship he had spent three, four years building with them. And so he's trying to tell them, I'm going to the Father. John 14. Well, where's the Father? Oh, he says, and you know where I'm going. And Thomas, you don't love Thomas. I don't know what you're going. What are you talking about? He didn't say he knew where they were going. He said, you know the way I'm going. And they were going, we don't know what we're talking about. And he says, well, I'm going to the Father. And I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to Father unless they come with you. Philip says, well, then show us the Father. And Jesus said, have I been so long with you and you do not now. He who has seen me has seen the Father. Because I am the Father and one. And everything I have done, I've done in my Father's name. It's not my works that I've done. These were not Jesus' things. These were Yahweh's things. These were Yahweh moments. God has been in me. You've seen me. You've already seen him. See, they didn't know. They didn't know he was God in the flesh. And he's telling them now in the most intimate terms he can tell them. And in John 15, we'll see as we read it tonight and tomorrow night and the next, we're going to see that he says to them, I no longer call you slaves. Not people of mere obedience. Not people, not subjects of the awesome God. He said, I call you friends. He's speaking of God's behalf here. I don't know anywhere in the New Testament, anywhere in the Gospels, where it says, Jesus ever said, hey slave, hey slave. What he says here, I no longer call you slaves. When was he calling them? We know what he's talking about. Up until the revelation of Christ among us. Those who were God's people were God's slaves. Christ came to let us in on that which father had held in his heart since the day he created Adam and Eve in a garden. I want to be your friend. I want to walk with you. I want to talk with you. I want to enter into every area of your life and reveal my glory in you. That's what I want. Now in Christ, he had it for three years. But the mask was coming off. The disguise was going to be put it back in the closet. He was going to be seen for who he really was. And the whole upper room discourse is to get them to understand, listen, I don't want anything to change. And you know who I am. In fact, I came so that I could take you to the Father. I came so that you could know him. Up to this point, you've asked nothing in my name. Now you're going to ask the Father. We'll talk about that in John 15. Because there's three incredible promises in John 15. The fruits of this relationship, these we'll look at tonight. He promises them in this exchange with God, meaning in him like a branch remains in the vine. You know what? You're going to bear fruit. There's going to be fruit flowed from your life. What is that fruit? We'll talk about it. He says there's going to be a fullness of joy. I tell you these things so that my joy might be in you and you might live my joy to the fullest. Whoa. The fullness of joy. Fulfillment, fruitfulness. And he says, and you're going to ask the Father for anything in my name and you will get it. How about you? My spiritual life doesn't always rise to that level of promise but that's the promise. Answered prayer. Fulfillment of joy. Fruitfulness from our life. Out of what? Out of a relationship with him. Out of living in the friendship. That's what he said to them. You guys already know the way. We don't know the way. We didn't get a manual. We didn't get a checklist of here's how to be a good disciple. We didn't get that. He says, you know me. You know, hang with me and be my friend. Everything that needs to happen in you will happen in you. I love the words I've already heard in this fellowship. Love words like process. Heard this one. We're in process. Yes, we are. You're not perfect yet. Are you? You are cool. Enjoy it. Me, I'm still a long way from home. Still growing. Still being changed. And all the while enjoying a relationship with Jesus makes him part of every day in every life. And he says to the disciples, this is what? Really? John 14. Look at verses 19 and 20. He says, I'll leave these orphans. If I leave them, I'm going to come back to you. He said, I will dwell with you. And in that day. What day? In that day. I think he's probably, he's not clear here. Could be the day of his resurrection. Could be Pentecost. But in that day, you're going to know something that I'm in the Father. The Father is in me. And I am in you. That's the simplest little verse in the world. A little word in. There's not much you can do with that. You can't do great Greek studies with it. Or anything like that. Almost misses it. It blows by so fast. What are you saying? That the Father and the Son and the Spirit have existed together in a relationship of absolute oneness and love and sharing of life and joy. They have communed together for all eternity. Father, Son and Spirit in such dynamic that you can't even see the distinctions between them at times. Three in one. Three persons of one God. Existing in love and unity and life and joy. And one day they were dead just, they enjoy it. You and John 17 is Jesus' praise to his Father. And you've got to know they really enjoy that relationship. Father, you've given me everything that was yours. And now everything you've given me, I give back to you. You've given glory to me. I give glory to you. Now this is a fun relationship. They're in each other with such a depth of relationship and life that they exist in this absolute unity of love, this pants of love and life and grace. And then when Jesus says, you know I'm in the Father and the Father's in me, now he says, we want you to be in us. You want me to share that relationship? That's exactly what he's made. Not as gods, as creatures. As created creatures, redeemed by an awesome God who did an incredible work on the cross and we'll talk about probably on Monday night that allows you and I to be in him, in Christ, before we've done one righteous thing with our lives except acknowledge who he is and in place. And he invites us into this community that is God and allows us to partake of that community and as we will see, if we remain in him, everything he wants to do in us, every bit of righteousness he needs to work out in us, every sin he needs to liberate us from, every bondage, every cruddy thing, every distraction of our lives will be hammered out in the context of this love relationship. That's all he's wanted since the creation of the world. That you and I would learn to live in him. I think it's a learning thing. It's a process. Because this God's, you know, yeah, it would have been easier, I think, if Jesus were here in the flesh, don't you? Might have been a little easier. You know, Jesus would be our friend. We would go fishing together and find money and fish. And we'd go to a lunch in a row. One lunch needs to come. That's cool. And, you know, come over to my mother-in-law's when she's sick and heal her. And it would be really, really fun if he were here in the flesh. The relationship he wanted with his disciples was to carry beyond him being visible to a greater reality when he came to live inside them and reign in them. This is the God we love and serve. So much of our 2,000 years of Christian history has helped us recreate around God and Jesus this religion of do's and don'ts and ethics and shoulds and musts. And we've taken this wonderful thing called relationship and made religion out of it. And this day, I think God's turning our hearts back to an understanding of relationship. It was never about the shoulds. It was never about how good you can be because you can't be good enough. It's about him being good enough to love you. And when you know you are loved by God, when you know you are loved by God, your life begins to change. Man, things happen to God. God would even know who I am, first of all, is just a miracle to me. That God would care about me is an even greater miracle.