SEEK

Thank you music team. Well done this morning.

Well, good morning Church! Good morning to those of you joining on the LIVE stream. We are glad you can be with us this morning.

Introduction

Well we are in the sixth installment of our series we are calling “Disciple”. How many will there be? I don’t know. If my Romans Bible study was any indicator, we have about 60 more to go!

I reckon we won’t spend that much time on this but we certainly could. Discipleship is a BIG topic and it is central, or at least we want it to be central to everything we do here at LFB. So I think it is appropriate to take as much time with this as we need to.

My goal is that when we are done, there should be no doubt in the minds of those who have made an effort to be with us through this series, no doubt about what a disciple is, WHO we are called to be disciples of, and HOW we engage in the Disciple making process, both for ourselves and for those around us.

Now, one thing I hope I have made clear so far is that the disciple making process begins with you. It begins with your own discipleship with Jesus. And if you have been listening to these messages, and are familiar with the book by John Mark Comer called “Practicing the Way”, then no doubt you have heard me reference that book and the ideas put forth there. But primarily I have tried to lean very hard into the scriptures because the Bible has a LOT to say about discipleship.

But one of the things about Comer’s book that has my attention is how he defines the discipleship process. He calls it Practicing the Way, but he defines the process as Being With Jesus, Becoming Like Jesus, and Doing as Jesus Did. That is in fact discipleship in a nutshell.

I said at the beginning of this series that we cannot disciple someone effectively until we ourselves have committed to BEING DISCIPLES ourselves.

Now if you have been with us so far, you know that we have spent some time looking at the cost of discipleship, the importance of counting the cost involved in being an apprentice to Jesus Christ and we have considered some questions that might help us determine if we are indeed disciples or not. We have spent some time “Beholding” the ONE to whom we intend to follow or become apprentices of, that being of course the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have challenged you all to think about and answer the question that Jesus posed to His original disciples, “Who do YOU say that I am?” Who IS this Jesus we claim to follow?

I also warned about the danger of following a Jesus of our own making, which often resemble ourselves, and I have encouraged you to go to the scriptures and look to what they say about Jesus and the claims He made about Himself.

We have talked about where we go in the day and age in which we live to find Jesus and spend time with Him. The challenge there of course is that Jesus is no longer with us in the flesh.

We have talked about making a habit of spending time with Jesus in the “blank spaces” of our day. Those moments standing in line at the grocery store, or sitting at a traffic light, where instead of pulling out our phone we actually spend those moments contemplating Jesus and the things He has said to us.

And that brings us to last week. Last week I gave you an assignment. Yeah you thought was going to forget.

I have already heard from a number of you that you actually took the charge seriously and spent some quiet time just sitting before Him.

Let’s see. How many of you took some time, first thing in the morning, to just sit with Him. Contemplating His love for you? Anyone? Well I hope that was a blessing for you. I hope you experienced an encounter with the living God and I hope you took it beyond last Monday morning.

Because here is the promise we have from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Mat 7:7-8 ESV - 7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

Here we see Jesus issue an invitation that is accompanied by a promise. IF we seek Him we Will FIND Him. IF we seek Him He WILL reveal more of Himself. IF we seek Him we WILL be blessed.

Folks, here is what I think. This is not doctrine, this is merely observation. I have been doing this for a pretty long time and it is my humble opinion that most evangelicals in the church today, know about God but they do not Know God. And As lovingly as I can, I would venture to say that is true of many in the room today. This is where we really need to face ourselves.

Some orthodox believers would say that God cannot really be known. Knowing Him is too lofty a thing. And many evangelicals today would argue that point, myself included. I believe God can INDEED be know. Fully known? Not yet. But known at a far deeper level that most actually do. If we are honest we would have to admit that at best, we are really “orthodox evangelicals”.

Oh we can declare the Gospel clearly. We can smell unsound doctrine a mile down the road. We will say with all authority that a person comes to know God through Jesus, and the work He did on the cross on our behalf, by placing our faith in His teachings and His promise and through the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within those who exercise faith in all of this. And yet, we see Christians, who claim to have embraced all of that, walking around with heads hung low, no perceivable joy or peace exhibited, when in fact we should be the most joyous and peace-filled people on the planet.

JI Packer wrote,

“One can have a great deal of knowledge ABOUT God without much knowledge OF Him”.

and equally true he wrote...

“One can have a great deal of knowledge about godliness without much knowledge of God.”

And I have come to believe that these statements are true and the rule among people sitting in churches all across America this morning, rather that the exception.

We know a lot ABOUT God but we know very little OF Him.

How can we remedy this shortcoming? How can we learn to be WITH Jesus enough to become like Him and begin to live our lives doing what he did?

How can we learn to slow down and become people of peace and love rather that people who are frantically trying to figure out where we fit into a broken world that is not even our home? Or worse yet, trying to tell everyone else how badly THEY have missed the mark that we ourselves have yet to find. Resulting in stressed out, depressed, unhealthy and unfruitful lives or, lives that are so full of hypocrisy that we become a laughing stock to the world around us. Well the scriptures invite us to the solution.

So we have talked quite a bit about the idea of abiding. That is spending a great deal of time in His presence. But it occurs to me that perhaps we have missed a step.

And that step is in fact the title of this morning’s message. SEEK.

What did Jesus promise? seek, and you (might) will find

the one who seeks finds.

So my question to you is are you seeking? Are you pounding on the door? Are you asking God to reveal more of Himself to you? And not just once in a while. The language Jesus uses here is the idea of continually seeking, continually knocking, continually asking.

Last week I challenged you to sit quietly before the Lord on Monday morning. I suspect that by Wednesday that act fell by the wayside. Maybe it didn’t take that long.

I suspect many of you did not keep on seeking or even begin seeking. For some, seeking is nothing beyond our Sunday morning gatherings. And that is the problem. Until we develop in our lives a regular and constant habit of seeking and abiding we will never really know God.

Notice the posture we see described by the Psalmist in this passage…Psalm 105 and verse 1. Please turn there with me a look at it with me…I’ll wait for you to get there. Tell me if this describes your posture.

Psa 105:1-4 ESV - 1 Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! 2 Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! 3 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice! 4 Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence (every Sunday morning) Did I get that wrong? (Seek His presence for 1 hour every morning) Nope! Got it wrong again.

Seek His presence…here it is…continually!

In Psalm 34:8 David bids us...

Psa 34:8 ESV - 8 Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

Beloved, I have said it over and over again, the very Spirit of God dwells within those of us who reckon His reality. Though we cannot always see Him clearly, and scripture warns us that we can suppress His influence and presence in our lives, He is inviting us to take refuge, inviting us to recognize His presence and spend our days abiding with Him, just as though Jesus Himself were here in the flesh walking beside us…but as Jesus said, better than that! God Himself is present waiting for our response to these invitations we read in His Word. And His promise is, IF you seek me you WILL find Me!

Are you seeking?

In the Hebrew it is the word baw-kash

In the greek it is zay-tay-oh

Both are verbs, action words that carry the meaning to intentionally seek IN ORDER to find. To Seek in order to find out by thinking, meditation, reasoning, to inquire after. to Strive after.

We read that passage last week in the book of Acts where we are told that God

Act 17:26-27 ESV - 26... made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and here it is...find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,

Why do I continue to belabor this point? Because we are not doing it! Not really. We compartmentalize our spiritual life from our fleshly. secular life and the worst part is the spiritual gets far less attention from us than the fleshly secular part.

Why is that? I think I know. Let me take a shot at it.

Beloved the invitation is to seek Him with our whole hearts. In fact, it seems if we do not, we will have trouble finding Him. he will not be real to us.

Now, a minute ago I used the word “reckon”. That’s not just me being my usual redneck self. To me that word “reckon” is a very serious word. Reckon does not mean to visualize or imagine. I hope that none of you walked away from here last week thinking that’s what I wanted you to do Monday morning was sit and imagine Jesus. That will not do much for you. You must reckon His reality and His presence

Imagination is not faith. (We are going to talk more about faith in a minute) Imagination is not faith. The two are not only different, but stand in sharp opposition to each other. Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to those images. Perhaps our imaginations can get close to reality, but all too often, imagination leads us further away from what is actually real. Faith on the other hand, creates nothing, it simply reckons upon that which is already there.

God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are real. We can reckon upon the them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. How do I know that? Well for one thing, why would scripture bid us to seek and find, taste and see something that cannot actually be found or be seen?

See here is our problem. We have established bad thought habits. We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of anything we cannot physically see. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world, but we doubt that it is real according to our accepted meaning of the word.

Our five senses constantly bombard our attention day and night, and have been doing that for our entire lives. These senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch never appeal to our faith but only to that which can be identified by each sense. And it these five senses that demand that we accept only the things they sense as “REAL”.

On top of that, sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts, (That veil we spoke of a couple weeks ago), that we cannot see that other reality, the one that dwells within us, that Helper that jesus sent to help people all over the world to connect with Him.

So we have to learn to not rely solely on our five senses, and seek.

Now there is a passage in the book of Hebrews that connects this seeking that we are invited to do and our faith, in a way that quite frankly I have never noticed before.

It is amazing to me what the Bible teaches if we will slow down and carefully consider it. Stay with me. Lately my friends that I gather for coffee with on Monday mornings, have had some lengthy conversations about faith.

Whoa! Wait a minute Hutch, I thought we were talking about seeking and abiding. We are. I will connect them shortly.

I think we could all agree that high on the list of things taught in the bible is the doctrine of faith. It is pretty hard to miss the weighty importance that Bible gives to faith. A passage like this one found in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 6.

Heb 11:6 ESV - 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him,

Pretty clear and somewhat jarring statement isn’t it? In that one short verse the Bible elevates this business of faith to the highest possible level of importance. without it, it is impossible to please God.

In that case, I better find out just what this faith the writer of Hebrews speaks of.

It seems, faith will get me anything, take me anywhere in the Kingdom of God. But without it, there can be no approach to God, no forgiveness, no deliverance, no salvation, no communion, in fact without faith there can be no spiritual life at all.

So, it is no wonder that volumes have been written to help us define faith and to determine if we in fact have this all important gift.

In fact, the question, “what is faith” has been the subject matter of countless sermons and debates for more years than any of us have been around.

What is faith? and Do I have it? Important questions yes?

I don’t know about you, but most sermons I have heard on the subject, most sermons I have preached myself on the subject, convey that faith is believing a promise, that it is taking God at His word, that it is reckoning the Bible to be true and therefore stepping out and acting on that truth. Then those sermons are often concluded by stories of persons who have exhibited great faith and persons who have had their prayers answered because of their great faith.

In fact those in the so-called Word of faith movement will tell stories of prayers of the “truly faithful” as being answered with gifts of health, wealth, physical protection and business success.

So, much to be said about what faith is and so many stories of those who truly have it.

But oddly enough, in scripture, there is almost nothing said in an effort to define faith other than that all too familiar passage in Hebrews 11:1 that says...

Heb 11:1 ESV - 1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

I do not know of any other Biblical definition for faith.

But this definition is more a statement of what faith is in operation, than what faith is in essence. It assumes the presence of faith and describes what it results in. I was never very satisfied with that verse as a definition for faith.

And because scripture does not go farther than that with faith, we would be wise to only go that far as well and not attempt to go further. And yet we have tried. But what if faith is much simpler than we imagine?

We are told where faith comes from in Ephesians 2:8. It is the gift of God. So this is important. The faith the Bible speaks of is a gift, of God, like salvation. Nothing we do to earn or deserve it, it is a gift. Not something we have at birth. It is a gift given by God.

And we are also told that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17)

What is clear to me, is that given what little we have in the way of an actual definition of faith, I think I agree with Thomas Kempis who said, “I would rather exercise faith than know the definition thereof”

And what we see in this famous faith chapter in Hebrews is a whole list of people who did just that, exercised faith. But since it is a gift from God, we have to reckon it was not faith of their own conjuring but a gift that God granted to them AS they watch it, sought after him.

There is another dramatic story of faith in the book of Numbers chapter 21 that i think is worth a look. Turn with me if you will to ...

Num 21:4-9 ESV - 4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food." 6 Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live." 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

Interestingly enough, in the NT this bit of history is interpreted for us by none other than JESUS Himself. He is explaining to His listeners how they may be saved. He tells them that it is by believing. Then to make it clear, He refers to this incident in the book of Numbers. In John chapter 3 and verse 14 jesus says...

Jhn 3:14-15 ESV - 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Now notice. In His interpretation of the event recorded in numbers, Jesus makes the word LOOK in that story and the word BELIEVE in His version synonomous.

“Looking” on the OT serpent is identical with “BELIEVING” on the NT Christ” That is, looking and believing are the same thing.

And we know that looking is done with the external eyes but believing is done with one’s heart.

So what AW Tozer concludes by all of this is that “faith is the gaze of ones life upon a saving God”.

In fact it is the author of Hebrews that instructs us to look...

Heb 12:2 ESV - 2 ...to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,

From all this we learn that faith is not a one and done thing. A prayer said in that magic place down in front of the church. Rather, faith is a continuous gaze of the heart at Jesus. Believing is directing our heart’s attention to Him. It is lifting our mind to “Behold” as we said a few weeks ago, to BEHOLD the Lamb of God and never ceasing that beholding for the rest of our lives.

At first this may be difficult. When you consider all we have touched on over the past several weeks, it seems like a lot. But it will become easier if we look steadily at Him, quietly and without strain.

Distractions will hinder you to be sure. But once your heart is committed to Him, your attention will return again and again and rest on Him.

Again, it sounds like a lot, but this is actually a call to do less not more. As Comer says in his book. Seeking and abiding is not about adding complexity to your Christian walk, it is about pursuing simplicity. It is less about habit stacking and more about learning to say no to things that draw you away from Him.

Jesus is calling us to slow down and simplify our life around the three goals of being His apprentice, of being His disciple.

To be with Him.

To become like Him.

To do as He did.

To make apprenticeship to Him the center of gravity for your entire life.

We all know the challenges to this. Most of us have way too much going on to “add” jesus into our overly booked calendar. But here is the truth that we cannot get away from. There is simply no way to seek and abide with jesus without un-hurrying your life.

Dallas Willard said “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day”. He went on to say “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life” Hurry is the number one enemy you will face if you decide to seriously follow Jesus. And hurry won’t just stand in your way. It will actively fight against you.

Now, back to that passage in Hebrews that I started with a while ago. Hebrews 11 and verse 6

Heb 11:6 ESV - 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

There it is folks. Everything we just talked about all packed into one single verse! If we defined faith as a continuous gaze upon Jesus, then that is abiding. To abide we must draw near to God and believe, that is reckon He actually exists. The promise is He will reward those who what? Seek Him.

Reward us with what? With Himself. Ahhh and now we begin to KNOW God.

And as I said, when you begin to seek God with this kind of abandon, with this kind of faith, a faith that reckons Him to be real, knowing that all that is required is to look unto Him the author and finisher of our faith, at first it will seem odd. Keep going. keep seeking and the promise? You will find Him. But not if you give up.

If your prayer life has been an exercise in boredom, distraction, unsettling emotions coming to the surface of your heart, whatever you do don’t shame yourself. That is exactly what the enemy would have you do. Just keep praying. Stay with it. The one non-negotiable rule of prayer is this: Keep showing up. Stay with it and you WILL discover what all the fuss is about.

Folks, if your heart is anything like mine then you WANT to be with Jesus, but we just don’t have time to pray. We really do want to grow into people of love who closely follow our rabbi but our to-do lists are just too long to make any serious attempt. We know rest is a necessity of our spiritual journey and yet we just cannot seem to carve out a sabbath that lasts more than an hour or two. I mean to set aside an entire day for this as scripture commands, requires on 7th of our lives!

But how is this hurried life we live treating us and those around us? Really. We constantly feel hurried, anxious and far from God. We feel spiritually shallow and trapped in our self-defeating habits of behavior. We just keep living like this and god did not create us to live at this pace. no wonder it is not working. We ore out of rhythm with God. we have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Am I talking to anybody in the room today?

Our lack of margin is crippling us. We are worn out. We are tired. And for those of us involved in the ministry of the church, this is especially important for us.

AW Tozer said...

“God wants worshippers first. Jesus did not redeem us to make us workers; He redeemed us to make us worshippers. And then, out of the blazing worship of our hearts, springs our work.”

But now Hutch, you are asking us to add more. Add seeking. Add abiding. Add beholding. Add more praying.

No beloved. I am not advocating adding more. I am advocating replacing all the things that are hindering your spiritual development, which CAN include church work, with the one thing that can bring healing, and wholeness and comfort and ease, and fulfillment, and joy and peace. Spending time with Jesus. And His invitation is to come away with Him. Come and taste and see that I am good. Draw near to me and I will reward you with ...Me.

And then, as Tozer says, when you learn to properly worship me, the work you do will become more effective, more kingdom expanding, more disciple making than ever before.

But here is the hitch.

Doing this my friends will require you to take very intentional steps to slow down. it will require you to take a serious and honest look at how you spend your time and begin to cut out more than you add as you seek after Him.

How many hours a day are you looking at a screen when you could be seeking after Him? How much of your day is spent worrying and fretting when you could be sitting at His feet? How much of your day is spent striving with another human being when you could be getting to know Him?

When Jesus invites us to follow Him, the clear implication is that there are some things we will have to leave behind. Take up your cross implies sacrifice. there are things we must let go of. Things we must die to.

Someone said, that every “Yes” is equivalent to a thousand “no’s”. Are you ready to say Yes to being a disciple of Jesus Christ? Then you must be prepared to say no to countless other invitations and distractions.

Beloved, I cannot think of a better decision you could ever make than to slow down, toss off all the weights that are just dragging you under, and seek Jesus like you never have before. Taste and see. Taste and see that the Lord is....GOOD.

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

Let’s pray...