Whom Are You Seeking?

We spend a lot of our lives looking for things, don’t we? I’m not sure I can even tabulate the amount of time I have spent looking for my wallet or my keys. Some of you have spent so much time looking for your glasses, which are probably on your head right now, that you go and buy 20 pairs of them at the dollar store and just leave them wherever you are going to be. I’ve gotten better, but when I was in Bible college and Abby and I were dating, there would be multiple times in a week when she would walk up with a sweater of mine that I had left somewhere and was looking for. We are always looking for things.

Some of you young parents send your kids looking for their baby bear stuffy, even though you know exactly where it is: hidden behind you because what you’re looking for, is one moment alone to collect your thoughts and breathe a little. Some of you have someone else call your phone, just so you can find it. By the way, you left it in the bathroom. One of you, is looking for a pair of white shoes. I know this because they have been sitting in the foyer of the church building for about a year now.

But beyond wallets, keys, glasses and phones, there are deeper things that we are looking for, aren’t there?Some of you are looking for approval and blessing from specific people in your life. Some of you are looking for stability and peace. Some of you are looking for adventure and purpose.

So what are you looking for? Or better yet, who are you looking for?

We are in week 3 of our teaching series Questions from Jesus, where we have been looking at some of the questions that Jesus asked others in the Bible. In today’s passage, we have an exchange between Jesus, who had died, been resurrected, but who hadn’t appeared to anyone yet, and Mary Magdalene, who had come to the cave where Jesus had been hastily buried in order to properly prepare his body. Let’s read John 20:11-18

John 20:11–18 NLT

Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her. “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?” She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.” “Mary!” Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”). “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.

Pray.

In the first century world of Jesus and the disciples, there were three primary religions at play in the area. First, there was the Hebrew religion that was monotheistic - meaning they believed in one God (Yahweh). Second, there was the Greek religion that had 12 major gods and goddesses and an untold number of lesser beings that were worshipped as well. In this religion, Zeus was the king of the gods, who although powerful was not almighty. They functioned like humans, and exhibited the same vices that we struggle with, but they were immortal and had powers. Third, there was the Roman religion, which was pretty much the same as the greek one, but with different names for the same gods. Zeus was named Jupiter, Artemis was named Diana, etc. and etc.

Many greeks and Romans were very devout worshippers of their gods. The mantra that founded the Roman religion was, “do ut des” which means, “I give that you might give.” It was a religion based on if a person did enough for the gods, the gods would then give some sort of blessing. So they would make offerings to the gods, and pray to the gods in the hope that the gods might show them favour. One of the thing that set the Greeks and Roman (and most other religions) apart from the Jewish faith was the use of idols. In the ancient world, only Israel forbade idols. For all the other faiths, their idols were sacred to them and they believed that if they didn’t have the idol to pray to, the god wouldn’t listen to them.

When I look at the story of Jesus and Mary that we read earlier, I see Mary, in mourning over the brutalized death of Jesus, wanting to honour him one last time. In her, I see a person who is looking for closure and who is so grief-stricken, that she doesn’t even recognize Jesus as he talks to her. But the point of this story isn’t a correction or a condemnation of anyone’s sin. The point is not that Mary did anything wrong. The point is that Jesus is alive. That he has overcome death and the grave and lives forevermore. The point is that in Jesus, there is life after death.

And as a side note, one of the pieces of this text that fascinates me is that within the patriarchal society of first century Israel- which overinflated the place of men and undervalued women, the first person that Jesus reveals himself to is a woman and the first person to preach the resurrection is a woman.

But back in our story, I am enthralled with Jesus’ question to Mary - Who are you looking for? I want to use this question as a springboard today to ask you “What are the idols - the false gods - that we spend too much of our lives looking for?” Who are you looking for?

I believe that most of us are looking for something - we have a sense that something is off, something is missing, something isn’t right in our lives and in our minds. And that holy discontent, as I like to call it, is God showing you the parts where you aren’t surrendered to him. The big problem though, that we usually try to fill those parts without God. Instead of looking for the resurrected Christ, too many of us spend our lives looking for our false idols to satisfy us and make us feel whole. I would contend that everyone of us, at some time in our lives, looked for our wholeness in one or all of three other gods.

The God of Security

No one likes to feel unsafe. Even those of us who are super adventurous want to feel safe. We don’t skydive without parachutes. We don’t rock-climb mountains without ropes. I have had the privilege of going on vacation to Mexico twice in my life. Both times there, Abby and I went on a zip-line excursion which was thrilling and fun for us. But when we were getting ready, the crew helping us was assuring that we would be safe. They set it up so that on every zip line, you were attached to two cables. If one were to somehow break, the other was strong enough for you to keep going and safely arrive at the next platform. And they would always send one of their people first, to show us that it was safe. We liked the thrill, but we still wanted to feel secure.

In life, we desire security. We desire to feel safe. In high school, I had my fair share of bullies and got beat up a few times. And it has so impacted me that even today, as an adult, I feel a bit of fear when I go into a school. A few years ago, I was a youth pastor and I was in the high school with my friend who worked for Youth for Christ. As we walked in the hallways, I felt this fear, this feeling of being unsafe, like these 15 year olds were all of a sudden going to beat me up. It was weird. It was also weird because on that first time in that school, a fight did break out. All of a sudden I am standing in between two students who have their firsts cocked back ready to fight and I am trying to keep them separated. Then, a hero came along. The 5 foot 4 secretary, who storms in like a WWE wrestler, grabs one kid by the back of his shirt, opens a closet door, shoves the kid inside, slams the door shut and then stares down the other student, pointing right at their face, telling them to walk away. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I felt safe near this woman who has saved me from those ruffians.

We all want to feel safe but the problem is when we pursue security in and of itself as if it were a god who could save us. For some, you want to feel financially safe and so you pursue making and hoarding as much money as you can and soon you are working 80 hours per week, your spouse and your kids don’t know you because you are never around and you have no friends. Your pursuit of the false God of financial security has left you feeling relationally bankrupt.

For others of you, you are looking for relational security. You are afraid of people leaving you, of abandoning you, of betraying you and so you change yourself to make yourself more acceptable to them. Or you secretly check their messages and social media or you track them with a tracking app so you know where they are. Or maybe, you are afraid of them hurting you, so you keep them emotionally distant. Ironically, many people in their search for the god of security, end up pushing away the very people they are afraid to lose.

For some of you, your pursuit of the false god of security means you have to control everything. You subconsciously believe that it’s only safe in your hands so you can’t delegate work out, in case someone else makes a mistake. You have to plan every aspect of the vacation so that it’s exactly what you want. To riff on a Jeff Foxworthy type of joke - If you have been in more accidents than your spouse, but you still won’t let them drive, you might have a control problem.

The god of security is a god who promises that if you do this, or get that, you won’t have any worries in this life - that you will have nothing to fear.

The God of Significance

Everyone wants to feel important. Like they matter. I never had to worry about that. I am an only child and on my father’s side of the family, I am the only grandchild / nephew. So, I have always been the bright shining star of the universe. It was wonderful. But while I fully admit that I was privileged growing up in that I never felt insignificant to my family, that wasn’t true amongst peers. Before grade 9, I always struggled to make friends and I felt so lonely at times. I felt insignificant.

Those feelings often stay with us. At one church I served in, I had ideas that were dismissed by others or simply ignored and I found those feelings of insignificance arising in me, causing me to have relational friction with those I worked with. For some people, their sense of significance comes from the amount of likes/views and followers among their social media. There are some out there who feel like if they don’t go viral, they won’t matter. And, while it’s easy to judge them, now that we are online, I understand it a bit. At the beginning of this year, I preached through the book of Luke. And on January 24, we had 193 views. I remember being in awe about it. Then on April 11, my friend Barry Canning came to Stratford and preached a sermon called “More than conquerors.” That video got 546 and I admit to you, I was jealous that he got more views than I did. Last week, we only had 51 views of our service on youtube and it makes me wonder, what’s wrong with me, that more people aren’t watching it. I know that the amount of views don’t determine my significance, but it’s easy to place my value in them.

I have counselled many people who grew up feeling insignificant - like whatever they did, it wasn’t enough. It caused some of them to become ultra competitive and others to have a give up attitude - after all, why try if no one cares? And as we work through the issue, you can see how that sense of being insignificant has affected their careers, their marriages, their friendships - even their relationship with God.

The god of significance is a god who whispers that if you do this, you will be loved. If you have that, people will notice. I you behave this way, you will be accepted.

The God of Self

The God of self is that voice that says, “treat yo’ self” whenever a temptation comes up. It is a god that is primarily concerned with making you happy. But the happiness that it promises is a short term, situational happiness. When we worship the god of self, we spend rent money on $300 headphones, which makes us feel good, until the first of the month comes around. When we worship the god of self, we watch porn as a means of sexual fulfillment. When we worship the god of self, we do things for our sake, not others.

There was a man who had worked all his life and saved a lot of money, but he was a real miser.He hoarded his wealth - he was never generous nor did he ever help others. Just before he died he asked his wife to put all his money in the casket with him when he was buried so that no one, not even her, could have it. Being the good wife that she was, she promised to do so.

After his funeral was over, just before the casket was sealed his wife put a white envelope into the casket and turned away.

A close friend who had been present when the husband made his selfish request asked the wife if she thought she should reconsider her actions. The wife responded, “I cannot break my word. I wrote him a check.”

These are some blatant examples of what pursuing the god of self looks like. But the god of self is a trickster. He can be very subtle. For example: You know when you go to work, and that slacker seems to get all the praise and kudos, while you are working your tail off in the background and those angry, jealous, negative feelings arise in you? Those come from the god of self. You know when you get home from work, and you’re tired, and all you want to do is watch TV and then go to bed, but your wife wants to “talk” and your kids want you to play and you sigh deeply like “uggh, my life is so hard.” That’s the god of self arising.

These three gods, who we often pursue to meet our emotional needs, are not bad things in and of themselves. Emotional security isn’t a bad thing. Significance isn’t a bad thing. You aren’t a bad thing. But when we pursue these things outside of God - outside of Jesus - we turn them into idols.

Jesus asked Mary, “Who are you looking for?” My challenge to you today is look for Jesus.

In Jesus, we have security. Instead of pursuing all these things that might make us feel secure, all these false idols, look for Jesus who grants you spiritual, eternal and emotional security.

In John 10:27-29, Jesus says “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else. No one can snatch them from the Father’s hand.”

The apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:3-5 “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.”

Your future is secure in God. If you have put your faith in Jesus, your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life and nothing in this world can take that away from you. Your present relationship with God is secure. He has promised he would never leave you or forsake you and that he is with you when you go through the storms of life that we talked about last week. God loves you so much that Jesus came to save you through his sacrifice on the cross. All the things that you are experiencing that make you feel insecure will pass away as you look to Jesus.

The apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 “...Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

We feel unsafe and insecure when we look at our circumstances. God invites you to look to Jesus instead, to put your faith in him, and to know that no matter what, God’s got you, and he’s not letting go.

In Jesus, we have security. In Jesus, we also have significance. In chapter 15 of Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells three parables: One about a lost sheep, one about a lost coin and one about a lost son. And what they have in common is that in all three, the thing that was lost was valuable to main character. In the parable of the lost sheep. The sheep was valuable to the shepherd. He could have ignored the lost sheep and abandoned it because he had 99 other sheep, but he didn’t because that one sheep was significant to him. The woman who lost a coin, could have given up looking for it because she had 9 other coins. But that one coin was important to her that she kept looking for it until she found it. And in the parable of the prodigal son, the father waits for his wayward son, looking down the dirt road and when the son comes home, he restores him and celebrates his homecoming. The son who spurned him, who insulted him and who squandered a third of the value of the farm, was still loved by his father.

Even if you don’t feel significant to your parents, to your children, to your siblings, to your coworkers, that does not mean that you aren’t. We have a God who loves you so much, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him, shall not perish, but have eternal life. To God, you are significant. Not because of what you have accomplished, or because of your potential or because of what you bring to him, but because he made you in his image and he loves you.

So put down the burden of living up to everyone else’s expectations of you and rest in your spiritual significance - that you are son or a daughter of the most high king who loves you, who likes you and who is never too busy to be with you.

In Jesus, we have security and we have significance. We also have purpose.

We are called, in the Bible, to live for the glory of God. We are called to make disciples of all nations. We are called to be ambassadors of Christ and to be salt and light in our community. In all the ways that God calls us, he calls us to be God-oriented first and others-oriented second.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:24-25 “...If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”

Dying to yourself and patterning your life after Jesus - That’s being God-oriented and as our Lord and King, he should come first in our lives before all else. But second to that, we need to be others-oriented: Paul writes in Philippians 2:

Philippians 2:3–11 NLT

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Just as Jesus humbled himself, came to earth and sacrificed himself on the cross, for our sake, so we need to think of others and serve one another, and love one another.

Conclusion

Throughout our lives, we are called to turn away from the idol of security and to find our security in character and work of Christ. We are called to turn away from the idol of significance and find our identity in Jesus. And we are called to turn away from the idol of self and become God-oriented and others-oriented.

Pastor and Author Tim Keller, in his book “Counterfeit God” wrote, “The only way to free ourselves from the destructive influence of counterfeit gods is to turn back to the true one, the living God….he’s the only one who if you find him, can truly fulfill you, and if you fail him, can truly forgive you.”

Jesus asked Mary, “Who are looking for?” I ask you, “Who are you looking for?” and I hope and pray you seek Jesus Christ - our resurrected Saviour who forgives you, who sustains you and who loves you.