Cultivating Intimacy with Christ
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Good morning church, I am so happy to see you all this morning thank you for joining us here this morning, as wel as online we are glad you are here today.
“Just a closer walk with thee..
grant it Jesus is my plea
daily walking close to thee
let it be, dear lord let it be”
Nearer my god to thee, Nearer my God to thee...
Draw me close to you, never let me go
I lay it all down again, to hear you say that Im your friend
help me find a way bring me back to you....
Your all I want your all Ive ever needed
This morning we will begin a series entitled CLOSER: Cultivating intimacy with Christ.
You know when you go to a ballgame you never want to be in the nose bleed section do you? I mean if your going to ay to have tickets you dont wanna pay to sit so far away that the players look like little ants running around you wanna get the whole experience dont you? You want to sit closer rather than far away.
My mom and my wife like to sit far back when they fo to the movies Amy on many occasions is trying to find a seat on the back row but not me man when I pay to see a movie I wanna be close I wanna feel the speakers shake my chest man when the action starts.
When you are fishing do you wanna be on the back of the boat or the front?
You wanna be on the front where you have the best angle at the honey hole
closer is better than further away
That is what we want to talk about today and over the next few weeks what it looks like to grow closer to God and how to begin drawing near to Him in order for Him to draw near to you. I dont know about you but I dont wanna be in the cheao seats when it comes to experiencing God and His glory on display in my life. ‘
I don’t want to be further away from Him I want to be closer and closer and closer until the day I go to be with Him amen?
This is what the book of 1 John is all about intimacy with God.
Intimacy=deeply commited, deeply rooted relationship and closeness
We know that the apostle John is the apostle of intimacy, He is the one whom Jesus loved. He was very close and loved by Jesus. He is very concerned with our closenss with the Lord, our fellowship with the Lord.
He does not want God’s children to have a long distance relationship but an intimate association with Him.
1 John, 2 John, and 3 John formulate a trilogy on intimacy
He writes to Christians this is not about proof that you are saved these are proofs that you are close to God or not.
That is why he begins this letter saying that he desires for us to have the fellowship with god that they have.
That is why he calls his audience little children, bc they are already believers in Christ but he wants them to know and be able to test the level of their intimacy. So he talks to them about thier obedience, their walking with God in righteousness, their submission in the truth and their functioning in love with each other.
These are the keys to a closer walk with the Lord.
John at this point is believed to be an elderly man, speaking as it were to his children in the faith people he watched become saved and has watched and is watching grow up in the Lord.
So he wants them to experience Jesus not just a church service, not just a sermon but he wants them to experince the supernatural presence and closeness of the Lord Jesus Christ and so he is teaching them some things that will help them grow closer to the Lord and in turn the Lord with draw closer with them.
So John wrote with at least 4 purposes in mind:
to combat false teachers
To combat wrong attitudes about sin
To strengthen the church
So that Christians might have complete joy!
So understanding this lets dive in.
there are many versions of Christianity today unfortunatelty, there are some who emphasize spiritual gifts while others spend all their time dealing with the angelic, some forms who are Christian in name focus on prosperity while other radical groups seem to think that a Christian must only suffer if they want to be truly holy.
the sad part is that with all of the different forms of “Christianity” If you look carefully there are many “versions” which leave out the main thing.
CHRIST
I know it is crazy to think that there is actually a form of religion that claims the name of Christ without preaching Him but this is becoming more and more true. It has always been true but the further we have gotten down the road, the more confusing Christianity has become.
When I was a little boy I remember getting together with all the boys to play a baseball game kind of like what I mentioned last week, we all decided that we were going to play, but when we got down to the field I looked over at my friend and said hey grab a ball out of you bag, and he responded ball? I dont have a ball with me, we began to ask the other guys and to our surprise we had managed to get together to play a game and none of us had the very thing that was neccesary to play the game.
Such is Christianity in our day. People gather in the building, they sing the songs, but rather than focus on the focal point of our faith Jesus Christ the Son of God they have a myriad of other things they focus on, what the building looks like, what type of music should be sung, are people nice to me, they came to the right place with the right intentions, but they have forgotten the main thing they need in order to experience God.
People have unwittingly slipped into the trap mentioned in
traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people!
Paul was clear that we cannot deny Gods power, by ignoring the fact that our lives and even our relationship to a church is dependant upon our honor and worship of Christ and Christ alone. So we have to understand that if we are going to grow closer to the Heavenly Father we must become intimately aqcauinted with Jesus Christ.
Anytime you want to go deeper with God or closer with Him you have to begin with Jesus.
No question
So that is exactly where John begins
With who Jesus is and what He has done and the proof of those things happening.
The Truth We Believe
The Truth We Believe
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
Notice something reappear over and over again:
LIFE, LIFE, LIFE, LIFE FELLOWSHIP, FELLOWSHIP FELLOWSHIP, and lastly JOY
Doesn’t that sound good, it is almost as if John is emphasizing here, that when you and I follow Jesus that we dont just follow a set of rules and rgulations, but that through the person of the Holy Spirit God desires to give us life upon life, fellowship upon fellowship and JOY through Jesus.
Not rules and regulations, not dead religion but life exploding on the inside of you, joy which bubbles up from a place hidden on the inside.
Church if this is not how you feel on a daily basis then I want you to know something is wrong. Now I am not saying that we should manufacture something fake but what I am saying is that we should not walk around defeated and dejected because that is not why Jesus rose from the dead and placed His Holy Spirit within you!
He came to give us joy unspeakable and full of glory!
Christianity is the most exciting journey we could ever embark on, is it filled with trials yes, but having a daily relationship with a God who does speak to you, who does lead guide and direct you. Knowing that God is on your side and wants what is best for you and that he wants to spend time with you. WHOO that is shouting ground!
THANK YOU LORD!!
That is what Christianity is all about!
If you go back to the first book of the Bible you will see that Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day, they were close. However when sin entered the world it caused a separation between them and god. Fellowship with God was broken and consequences came.
The entire story of the Bible shows us how God through many different means has been orchestrating a plan to bring that fellowship back to mankind. Through His only Begotten son he has created a way for us to be brought back in to the family like is should have been all along.
We are saved from our sins by trusting in Jesus Christ but we are saved for fellowship with God.
The whole purpose of the gospel is to bring us into fellowship with God and in that closeness in that intimate face to face relationship we find that joy that is promised all throughout the Bible.
Our fellowship is with the Father and the Son
This is eternal life:
that they may know You, the only true God,
and the One You have sent —Jesus Christ.
What is eternal life getting into Heaven NO!~
Eternal life is to know thew true god and Jesus Christ who He has sent.
There were some in the early church who were decieved over this who issue. There were some people who claimed to have fellowship with God when they did not. They talked the talk, they used this church speak but the whole thing was empty for them bc they were walking in darkness.
If we say, “We have fellowship with Him,” yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth.
Then in verse 8 John speaks about some people who thought they had fellowship with God they really thought so btu the reality was that they did not
If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Remember the story of when Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple?
Must have been a big group traveling up to Jerusalem and when this group was coming back they thought Jesus was with them. They made that assumption. But they began to look and they realizeed that he wasnt there, he must have been left somewhere back down the road. Now how would you like to know that God chose you to care for His son and you lost him!
He was abck at the temple, I can think of nothing worse than to go through life thinking that Jesus is with you and to find out on the last day that he was not that you were decieved that you lived under a false assumption, that what you thought was fellowship with God actually never took root in you.
On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
There can be nothing worse than this!
Of course the question is then how can we know that we have fellowship with God?
John writes this letter to answer this question.
I wanna give you a picture of this
My wife looks out in the yard behind the mancave, and during hurricane michael a tree was torn down we had it cut up but there is this massive stump that remained. It was overgrown with weeds and sloped downhill its the kind of place in the yard that you are glad i behind something because its just a trash heap, nothing but weeds and looks unuseful.
But Amy looked at it and she saw what it could be, and she came to me and said I think I am going to start a garden, I thought to myself back here?
Man thats going to be tough, she didnt ask me for anything one day she just started working it. Slowly but surely weeds were pulled ground was tended and seeds were planted and what was once a nasty unuseful place became something beautiful. All of a sudden there was watermelons, corn, okra, sweet potatoes, peas, peppers, tomatoes, .....
Do you know what the evidence is that there is a gardnener at work?
IT is that His/her work can be clearly seen. It can be seen right from the beginning, but it can be seen more as time goes by.
the transformation from cluttered mess to beautiful garden has a sacrifice and process, there had to be a sacrifice she saw something that could be beautiful and productive. But she had to put in the sacrifice, she had to make her vision become a reality. Of course I helped but all credit goes to her.
I go back there and I think I cant believe what she got done there, bc I knew what it looked like before hand. But all she ever said was oh theres still alot to do. the work of a garden is never done.
Now think of your life as being a garden there are flowers to cultivate and weeds to be pulled the nature of the garden is that it is always going on it is alive, the need for pulling weeds is never done it is always continuing it is an ongoing task.
It is always a work in progress it is never complete in this life. but where the gardener is at work evidence will be clearly seen.
I want you to see this in Johns message there are flowers to be cultivated and weeds to be pulled.
Flowers to be cultivated
Flowers to be cultivated
He tells us that God is light and in Him there is no darkness (5)
Now this is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in Him.
If we say, “We have fellowship with Him,” yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth.
He says if we are going to have fellowship with him we must walk in the light and walking in the light means three things:
we must pursue obedience
grow in love
hold to the truth
What he is saying is that if you look at a person who has authentic fellowship with God you will always see evidence of these three flowers growing.
You wont see them everywhere in that persons life but you will see them planted there and you will see evidence of them growing.
THE FLOWER OF OBEDIENCE
And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.
This is the first evidence of a person following closely with the Lorrd it is that we seek to obey his commands
IF YOU LOVE ME THEN YOU WILL OBEY MY COMMANDS
Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,
John is saying here is the first thing if obedience is growing it is the sure and certain sign of the gardener at work. That is what He cultivates in the life he owns.
If obedience is not seen to be present or growing there is little reason to think that the garden belongs to God.
LOVE (2nd evidence)
Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.
He says this is the 2nd evidence that someone is walking closely with the Lord whoever loves His brother
Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.
In other words if love is not growing there is little reason to believe the garden belongs to God
there may be many claims or a bright neon sign that says this garden belongs to God but John is saying if you cant see the flower of love growing there then that sign might be false advertising.
TRUTH (3rd)
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
In other words where truth and especially the truth about Jesus does not take root in a persons life there is no reason to think that God is the gardner
Where God is at work these three flowers will be seen.
There will be evidence of cultivation of obedience love and truth
GOD HAS NO GARDENS WHERE THESE FLOWERS DO NOT GROW
THESE ARE THE EVIDENCE OF THE GARDNER AT WORK
They might not be flourishing at every part of the garden, they might not be extremely visible in the beginning of the Christian life but John is saying wherever the Gardner takes ownership in someones heart and life you wil find eveidence of these three things growing even in the beginning. ‘
WEEDS TO PULL
WEEDS TO PULL
It is very important for us to realize what John says what it looks like to walk in closeness with God John tells us
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
You shouldnt get the idea that you belong to God if the garden is weed free and perfect.
Thats not what he is saying if you think the garden of your life is weed free or free from sin then it is a sign that you are not saved but you are deceived.
It is a sing you are not walking close with God at all
One of the evidences of a person who has come into the light is that they see their sins more clearly and they about the business of weeding everyday.
Some weeds are there bc the root was not taken out when they began, some weeds are there because some seeds have blown in from the field next door but the work of pulling weeds is natural for the gardener if neglected they will choke the flowers.
He is not saying that you are sin free, he is saying when your life belongs to God there will be some evidence that these flowers of obedience, love and truth are growing.
When you walk in the light you SEE
God shows us our sins, and we confess it and discipline ourselves to rid ourselves of them.
(Nick)
Good man ethical, hard working he does not see his need for Jesus...
But once a person meets Jesus they begin to see things for what they are!
WE LIVE A LIFE OF REPENTENCE AND WALKING WITH THE LORD
We will always have weeds to pull!
But this is something we have to be active in not passive in!
There may be some of you in this room who have had the spiritual vribance sucked out of you, choked out of you oh you are a Christian but you havent weeded in a long time!
Those weeds are overtaking you and choking what God wants to do in your life, there is no closeness anymore
you need to acknowledge the weeds in your life and name them to the Lord confess them in order to overcome them
Thats Jealousy, thats a lie, thats greed, thats seflrightesouness
Your not walking in the light your in the darkness if you dont see weeds for what they are!
Thats how you know the garden belongs to God
God is telling you that you dont have to be perfect before you can have fellowship with Him!
thats what the cross is all about!
God does not come to you and say YOU MAKE THE GARDEN BEAUTIFUL AND THEN ILL COME AND MAKE IT MINE!
He says give me the garden and I will make it mine to make it beautiful
God walks with unbeautiful people in a process of restoration we have fellowship with God when we are not yet what we will be!
PErfectionist you know who you are
(amy cleaning before anyone comes over)
we have to be careful not to apply this to our Christian lives
God comes in and he begins the restoration process and he teaches you how to identify and pull weeds.
You do life together and that is what fellowship with God actually looks like
The evidence of a life owned by God is not that there are no weeds and the weeds are being pulled
Some of you are walking in darkness= you know you are not seeking obedience at all, you know that in a way that no one sees you have no love in you, your garden is overgrown.... I want to say to you this morning come to the cross.
Where God will take your mess and make it a miracle
some of you are walking in denial= well this is not for me
I have lived a good life!
some live in denial to our sin because we are scared out of our mind because we think that somehow if God really knew how we are then God would utterly destroy us. Heres the funny thing He already knows He knows better than you do...
Come to the cross
(gospel)
YOU KNOW WHAT I AM MAKE ME WHAT YOU SEE I CAN BE
This is what the cross is for1
There is someone longing for a deeper fellowship with God
COME TO THE CROSS FELLOWSHIP BEGINS AT THE CROSS BUT IT REMAINS THROUGH THE CROSS
THe day is coming when the garden will be complete not only will you be in Heaven but Heaven will be in you and that closeness will show up in your life!
(PRay)
Which are you?