©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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8/29/99
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All Your Needs Pt. 6
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Philippians 4:19
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8/29/99 All Your Needs Pt. 6
Several conversations I was involved in this past
week
have led me to believe
we are not yet finished
with what we were looking at last week.
Some of you were not here last week, of course,
and the rest of us have had
an awful lot of things
going on in our lives
since we were last together,
so we'll ease our way back into
where we were.
For a number of weeks, now,
we have been studying a single verse
found in the last part
of the last chapter of Philippians.
The verse is Philippians 4:19 in which Paul says,
And my God shall supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ
Jesus.
In an attempt to bring ourselves
to the place where we can relate to this verse
honestly
we have taken considerable time
to look at a number of the barriers we
bring to this verse
that complicate our relationship to it.
Most of the barriers we've looked at
have dealt with the way in which our concept of
what we really need
in order to live a fulfilled life
is all messed up.
We've talked about
the way in which we developed
our understanding of our needs
at a time when we were still fighting
against our Creator,
and running from Him.
We've talked about the non-negotiables we're
clinging to,
all those things we believe
we absolutely must have
in order to be truly happy.
We've talked about all those things
we're hanging onto
in order to bolster our self-identity,
things we think we need
in order to feel good about ourselves.
In other words,
most of the barriers we've talked about so far
have been concerned with
the distorted "needs list" we bring to
God
when we come to Him.
But there is a second major problem area
in this whole business
of God's commitment to meet our needs,
one that is potentially even more
destructive to us than our distorted concept of what
our needs are.
We've talked about this second area
a little bit so far,
but I think it needs more of our time.
You see, on one side we have a deeply flawed
concept of what we need,
but on the other side
we also have a deeply flawed concept
of the God we are bringing these needs
to.
And then, to complicate things more,
last week,
when we finally began to actually study the
verse itself,
the first, and by far the most important
need I placed on our list
was our need for God Himself.
Actually, what I said was that the beginning of
understanding
what God is saying when He says
"I will supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ
Jesus..."
is understanding that what we need
most
is God Himself.
Now I believe God's Spirit
enabled some of you to hear what I was trying
to say
when I made that statement.
I think there were some of you
who were able to look
at all of the things you have been
frantically cramming into your lives
in an attempt to quiet the pain,
or hide from the fear,
or the loneliness,
or the emptiness,
and in a very personal way
you were able to hear God saying,
"My child, what you hunger for is ME.
The longing you feel
is the longing of a created being
in a desperate search for his Creator.
There is nothing else,
no one else who can fill that void."
I think some of you heard that voice
and knew it was true.
But if that happened,
it was a very special work of the Spirit of God in
your life,
and it happened in spite of the lies
all of us battle daily about our God.
Now look at this...
I said last week that the beginning of
understanding
what God is saying when He says
"I will supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ
Jesus..."
is understanding that what we need most
is God Himself.
But the truth is
every one of us brings to that understanding
our own distorted perception
of who God is
and what He is going to do to us
and with us
if we really embrace Him
and give Him free reign in our lives.
I can go way back to the beginning
of my own little pilgrimage with God
and remember the sheer terror I felt
when I first realized God
was attempting to stake out a claim to
my life.
I saw Him as a threat
to everything I needed most for true happiness.
He was there to rob me of my future,
to shape me into something I didn't want to be,
to take away from me
things I knew I really needed.
I find that amazing!
What I needed more than anything else
for a deeply fulfilling and abundant life
was God Himself,
and yet what I feared more deeply than anything
else
was the intrusion of God into my life.
And that battle was not limited to my first encounter
with my God.
Every day I live
I find myself fighting the same battle
in different shapes and forms.
Every time I'm faced with the choice
of choosing submission,
or trust,
or obedience to God,
underlying those choices
is the same battle.
Can I really trust God's intentions toward me?
Will I be pleased with whatever it is
He wants to do in my life?
When we were talking about our "non-negotiable" a
few weeks ago
several of you talked with me afterwards
sharing with me honest insights
about the non-negotiables in your own
lives.
And with each of them
I could hear that same fear I know so well,
the fear of whether or not
what God wants for us
is what we really want for
ourselves.
You see our problem, don't you?
After three weeks of preparation,
last week I finally shared with us
the first thing that belongs
on every person's list of needs.
That first thing is God Himself.
But that also happens to be
the one thing we are most afraid
to place on the list.
Now why is that?
What is it that makes all of us
so frantic to bolt and run
at the sight of our God?
Well, there are some obvious things
that would contribute to that response within us.
#1. He is the One who offered us all of those THOU
SHALT NOT'S.
2. And we are the ones who broke them all.
Well, maybe not all of them,
but enough so that we feel real uncomfortable
hanging out with Him.
3. He is also the Supreme Authority in all of
creation,
and as such, in our minds He inherits
whatever negative experiences
we may have had with authorities in the
past.
God ends up looking a lot like dad,
or maybe like a policeman.
4. He is also the One
who wants to take away from us
some things we do NOT want to lose,
things we just know we must have for
survival.
5. And then there is that submission thing -
for some strange reason
He clearly reserves for Himself
the right
and the authority to be GOD
in the lives of those who come to Him.
6. And then, of course, we have the constant,
sweet,
persuasive,
all-pervasive voice of the Enemy
telling us a thousand times a day
that this God cannot be trusted.
If He ever gets a hold of your life
He will cheat you,
and punish you,
and then force you to become
everything you least want to be.
I mean, look at the way He treated
some of His most faithful throughout history.
They...were tortured, ... and others
experienced mockings and scourgings,
yes, also chains and imprisonment.
They were stoned, they were sawn in two,
they were tempted, they were put to death
with the sword; they went about in
sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute,
afflicted, ill-treated...
now, it's true these were men of whom the
world was not worthy,
but still they were wandering in deserts and
mountains and caves and holes in the
ground... (Heb. 11:35-38)
So what should we expect
if we also turn to Him in faith?
And then here I am,
your resident Bible Teacher,
suggesting that the one thing
that most belongs at the top of our needs
list is God Himself.
We certainly want some of the things
we think He might be able to do for us,
but there are a lot of reasons why
we are a little skeptical
about whether or not we really want
Him.
So what do we do with this?
Well, let me say first of all,
that the battles we fight in these areas
are the same battles
that every human on earth has fought
since the day Adam and Eve hid from their God in
the Garden of Eden.
And then let me say
that God's great solution
to our quiet terror of Him
is the center-piece of His entire revelation
of Himself to us,
and, in fact, is stated clearly
in this same verse we are studying.
We haven't focused on it together yet,
but I wonder if you noticed
the last phrase in Phil. 4:19.
Phil. 4:19 And my God shall supply all
your needs according to His riches in glory
in Christ Jesus.
When God talks to us
about approaching Him with our needs
the first thing He does
is to turn our attention once again
to the Person of Jesus Christ.
And let me try to explain
what I see going on here.
God loves us.
He has loved us since the day He created us.
His love for us cries out to us
through everything He has said to us
and done for us.
As soon as sin entered into man's relationship with
God, however,
two huge problems
entered into our relationship with God,
problems that made it impossible
for us hear His voice of love.
#1. The sin itself walled us off from Him.
#2. Our own sense of shame
made us want to run and hide.
And there we were,
separated from God,
unable to hear His love for us,
terrified of His intrusion into our lives,
without hope,
and with no way of undoing our
problem.
So what did God do?
How in the world
could He restore His friendship with us?
How could He rebuild our trust
in Him
and in His intentions toward us?
Do you know what He did?
He disguised Himself in a human body,
slipped into our world,
and lived with us as a man for 33 years
so that we could see just exactly
what our God is like
and how He feels about us.
Then, at the end of that 33 years
He offered His own death
as payment for our sins.
Now I want you to stay with me here
because there is something
I believe to be very important
that I want us to see.
When Jesus was here in the flesh
it took Him four years of living with His men
24 hours a day
before He could finally bring them to the
place
where He could reveal to them
who He really was.
Just hours before His death,
in His final conversation with His disciples,
He said, John 14:7,9 "If you had
known Me, you would have known My
Father also; from now on you know Him,
and have seen Him. Have I been so long
with you, and yet you have not come to
know Me, ...? He who has seen Me has
seen the Father..."
Now, each of those 1st century disciples
had to go through a crucial mental pilgrimage,
a pilgrimage that brought them to the point
where they could say:
"This Man Jesus is our God!"
But for each of us today
we must move through that pilgrimage in
reverse.
If we are ever to relate to
or respond to our Creator correctly,
we must reach the place
where we understand that
Our God is this Man Jesus.
And let me explain what I mean.
I believe the center of Satan's most effective attack
on the human race
is to separate the person of Christ
from the image of God in our minds.
EX. Let me ask you a question.
When you think about God,
and especially how He feels about you,
or how He responds to you in any given
situation,
does your mind go immediately
to the Person of Christ
as we have Him revealed in the Gospels,
or does it go to your own mental image
of who you think GOD is?
Let me try again.
If our concept of God is correct,
we should see ourselves
responding to Him
exactly the same way as the disciples
responded to Jesus.
But look at this:
In the Gospels we see Jesus' disciples,
and in fact nearly the whole nation of Israel
running to Jesus.
They packed themselves around Him,
pushing and shoving to get near Him,
until at times He couldn't even eat,
and could hardly breath.
The only ones who ran away from Him
were the religious people,
the ones who were hiding behind
their external religious facades.
But today, in our world, it's just the opposite.
Most of the world is running away from God,
and the ones who seem to be most comfortable
running toward Him
are the religious legalists,
those who are waving their little lists
as proof of their piety.
So what is my point in all of this?
1. Jesus Christ and God the Father are absolutely
identical in Their responses
to you and everything in your life.
2. It is impossible to correctly understand
the mind and heart of God
until we see it revealed through Christ.
3. When you find yourself pulling away from God,
ask yourself, "Would I respond the same way
to the Jesus I see in the Gospels?"
If we see a difference
between our response to God
and our response to Jesus
then we know with certainty
that our concept of God
has been twisted and distorted
by a bunch of Satan's lies.
There is a reason why almost half of the New
Testament
is made up of four separate accounts
of the life of Jesus.
Both God and Satan know full well
that we each begin our relationship with God
filled with fear and distrust of our Creator.
Satan's solution to that fear and distrust
is Religion.
Satan offers us neat little religious packages
in a wide variety of shapes and sizes,
each one offering
a list of duties we can perform
so that we can feel a little more acceptable to
God.
But God's solution to that fear and distrust
is to turn our eyes onto Jesus,
reminding us that this is our God,
this is the God we are afraid of,
this is the God we are having trouble trusting.
This is the God
who began His relationship with us
by removing our sin
through His own death for us,
and who now loves us,
and laughs with us,
and cries with us,
and understands us,
and delights in our friendship with
Him
in just the same way
as Jesus delighted in His friendship
with Peter,
and Mary,
and Matthew,
and John.
Certainly there are some very difficult things to
understand
about who God is
and why He does what He does.
But the beginning of all correct understanding of
God
is knowing that God and Jesus are one in the
same.