Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] From time to time, as a church, we have to accept special projects from God.
[00:00:20] Our health coaching ministry partners with a rehab organization called Alpha Georgia, and they have homes where people can rehab.
[00:00:40] They can't kick the habit themselves, and they have to go into these homes for special treatment.
[00:00:50] Well, when the tornado blew through a couple of weeks ago, it blew the roof off of one of their houses, and there's some insurance problems. And a roofing company agreed to do all the labor for free, but it cost $9,000 to buy the material.
[00:01:11] And so we accepted the challenges of the church to raise the $9,000. Okay. We don't have it in our budget. And so I'm asking you who God has blessed a and who has a heart to help people get their life free from drugs, to make a special contribution this morning, don't give your tithe, because I have to pay the electric bill this month. But if God has blessed you and you would like to partner in helping these people who are doing life changing work, you could give a special offering today. Sharon and I are going to do it. We believe that he who waters will be watered. You don't lose anything by being generous with people in need. So if you'd help on that, I would appreciate it very much. There's ways to give, and I don't remember how to do it, but if you'll talk to somebody, they'll tell you how to do it.
[00:02:20] Dear heavenly Father, I pray that today we could see in a fresh way that you are a designing God with a sympathetic heart, and that you want to fashion us into people who can enjoy living with you forever.
[00:02:44] So we invite your holy spirit to do that good work in our hearts. In Christ's name, amen.
[00:02:51] I recently read Greg Jarrett's book, the Trial of the Century.
[00:02:57] It's about the scopes trial. In 1925, on eleven unbearably hot days in Dayton, Tennessee, there was a trial that pitted William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat who ran for president three times and lost all three times, and a man who used to be a friend of his, Clarence Darrow, who was the top defense attorney in America.
[00:03:34] And the trial was over.
[00:03:38] John Thomas Scopes and teaching evolution.
[00:03:46] But in fact, it was a show trial.
[00:03:50] Some businessmen in Dayton, Tennessee, said the town is declining and we need to do something to get national attention.
[00:04:00] And so they thought the best way to do that was to have a trial about evolution, because it was a really big deal in the twenties.
[00:04:11] And so they talked to a young teacher named John Scopes and asked him if he would be willing to be the person who got tried for teaching evolution.
[00:04:22] Scopes admits himself. I don't know if I ever did or didn't. So it really wasn't about teaching evolution, because Scopes didn't know if he did or didn't have.
[00:04:33] And they had this huge trial.
[00:04:36] And Clarence Darrow made it his mission to humiliate William Jennings Bryan.
[00:04:45] And it was about political things that had happened in the past.
[00:04:49] And it blew up all across the newspapers, all over America. And to this very day, it's used as an example of religion persecuting science.
[00:05:02] And if you read what really happened, it had really nothing to do. First of all, Clarence Darrow was not a scientist. He was a lawyer.
[00:05:13] And William Jennings Bryant was not a theologian. He was a politician. And to say that it was a clash between religion and science is to misinterpret everything that happened.
[00:05:28] Because, in fact, the trial missed the major point.
[00:05:35] The major point is not evolution. The major point is materialistic atheism or divine design. I can make this easier. Okay.
[00:05:51] Are you the person you are today, by mere random chance, nature just happened to collide. The right DNA from your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents, and all you are is an expression of your heretical, your heritage of DNA.
[00:06:17] That's atheistic materialism. There's no real you.
[00:06:23] There's just electrochemical biology going on in your brain that makes you think you're you.
[00:06:33] That's atheistical materialism. On the other side, there is the idea that, no, this isn't random.
[00:06:44] That there is a brilliant mind that has designed this world we live in, and this brilliant, creative mind has made each one of us unique.
[00:07:03] And that's theism. So the real argument isn't between the methods of science and religion. The real argument is between, how do you see yourself?
[00:07:20] Are you nothing more than a chance biological item that lives in the sun for a brief time, and when your body can't sustain you anymore, there's nothing left of you, and you're gone.
[00:07:36] Or do you believe that there is a creator God?
[00:07:43] And he's used a multitude of things to create the world and make it what he wants it to be. And he is still active, and he is still developing people into their full potential. Because this is when you die here. It's really not the end. It is the beginning of the life that God designed your eternal soul to live.
[00:08:09] Personally, I come down on the side of theism. I just can't accept that this incredible biological world I live in is blind, random chance.
[00:08:23] I wanna make one more argument? If it is blind, random chance, then why don't I see de evolution and only evolution. If it's just chance, then the chances are from time to time something would go backwards, right? If it's just pure chance, you can't win the lottery every single time you play.
[00:08:46] And if it's just pure chance, then there should be evidence of decline, not progressive. Don't tell me extinction is declining. No. When an animal becomes extinct, it doesn't go backwards. It just can't survive in the environment it's living in now. It's not like anybody ever found a man who became a monkey because de evolution took things backwards. All right, I am a theist. I believe that somebody is create. Somebody created all of this. Somebody is fashioning. I believe every single person in this room is handmade by God.
[00:09:36] And the psalmist believed the very same thing. Listen to what he says. Psalm 100, 1973.
[00:09:45] Your hands have made me and fashioned me. Give me understanding that I may learn your commandments. Listen to what the psalmist said. Your hands have made me.
[00:10:02] You are handmade by God.
[00:10:07] You are one of a kind.
[00:10:10] You are physically unique. Nobody has ever had your fingerprint.
[00:10:16] Nobody has ever had your exact physical personhood. Identical twins are very close, but they're not identical.
[00:10:28] Everyone is unique.
[00:10:31] We're not just physically unique, we are psychologically unique. Every single person in this room is a unique person.
[00:10:40] None of you are a mere replica of someone or something else.
[00:10:46] We are handmade by God.
[00:10:50] And then the psalmist said, after God makes us, now he starts fashioning us. He starts molding us into something he makes us to begin with. But we're not done. We're not complete. So in our lifetime, he begins to fashion us so that we become more and more of the perfect idea that he had for us.
[00:11:16] I believe you've heard me say this before, church.
[00:11:23] You're not doing very good on your quiz today. Somebody said yes. All right, thank you.
[00:11:30] So how does God fashion us? Well, one of the ways he fashions us is he leaves us his guiding ideas in the scripture. The scriptures are not a rule book. They are guiding ideas for how to live the best life that the designer created us to live.
[00:11:53] And so we pray to understand God's guiding ideas so that we may live the life he fashioned us to live.
[00:12:03] Divine fashioning requires learning. The better I learn God's guiding ideas, the better life I live. You see, there is a designer and he has a design, and the better I understand the design and the better I understand who I am in that design, the better chance I have of living a great life.
[00:12:27] And then the psalmist said, those who fear you shall see me and rejoice because I have hoped in your word.
[00:12:39] When we live the life God fashioned for people to live, other people around us see the nature of God in us. See what is God doing? He's fashioning me to be more and more like him.
[00:12:56] Why? Because he is the perfect living being.
[00:13:01] He lives in absolute perfection. So when he fashions me to be more like him, he's fashioning me to be more of the ideal of what humanity was supposed to be.
[00:13:18] And when people see us fashioned by goddesse, they see something wonderful about God and they celebrate life.
[00:13:28] Do you know life is supposed to be celebrated.
[00:13:32] We aren't supposed to drag ourselves through weary days of life.
[00:13:38] The designer didn't design you to drag yourself through a long, unpleasant life.
[00:13:46] He designed you to live the kind of life that creates celebration around you. That people who experience something of the divine nature in you, they end up saying, life is better than what I thought.
[00:14:06] Being fashioned by God and living by his guiding ideas require hope. Listen to what he says.
[00:14:15] Those who respect you shall see me and celebrate because I have hoped in your word.
[00:14:23] Being fashioned by God and living by his guiding ideas require hope. What is hope? The expectation that God is right, good and loving.
[00:14:37] All right.
[00:14:39] I have to be a person who hopes if I'm going to be fashioned.
[00:14:46] Despair does not fashion people into better people.
[00:14:51] Nobody ever despaired themselves into being a beautiful soul.
[00:14:57] But hope does fashion us into better people. And what is this hope? It's an inward expectation that God really gets this and what he's asking me to do is right. And if I do it, my life will be better.
[00:15:15] What is this hope? This hope is that God is good.
[00:15:20] He's not giving me guiding ideas to make me unhappy in life. He's giving me guiding ideas because they're really good and they really create the best life. Do you see?
[00:15:34] And the hope is that God is loving.
[00:15:38] God is doing all of this. His motive for all of this is this inexplicable love he has for the people that he has created.
[00:15:51] What an insult it is to God, who is so good, so loving, so compassionate, so caring, so wise and so creative, to say you don't exist and everything you did is random chance. Everything you say you did is random chance. It's an insult to the character of God. Can you hear me, church?
[00:16:17] And then the psalmist said, your steadfast love, let your steadfast love, comfort me according to your.
[00:16:27] According to your promise to your servant.
[00:16:32] As God fashions us in life, some of the fashioning isn't pleasant, and it's difficult.
[00:16:40] Ah, see, the difficulties of life mold us, and they mold us two ways. The difficulties of life will make you a better person, or they'll make you a worse person.
[00:16:53] If you look at how life affects people and when they have difficulties, I've known difficulties that made people with ugly souls, beautiful people, and I've known difficulties that made people with good souls, ugly people. Church.
[00:17:12] The difficulties of life, they fashion us, and they fashion us in one of two ways. If the difficulties of life are gonna fashion me to be a better person, then I have to connect them to the steadfast love of God. In every difficulty of life, I have to say, where is the steadfast love of God in this problem?
[00:17:37] In this difficulty, how is God going to show me that he really cares for me? In this difficulty, how is God going to work in my heart in areas that I'm not even happy with myself, and how is he going to use this difficulty to make me a better person? Do you see, when I experience life molding difficulties, and I experience them in the context that God is good and that he loves me and he cares for me, and that this difficulty in my life, he's going to use for something more than just a miserable moment, he's going to mold me into a better person by how I experience him through this difficulty? Then the difficulties of life become God's fashioning hand, and we get better, and every difficulty makes us a little bit better person.
[00:18:38] God promises his steadfast love because he honestly desires to give it.
[00:18:46] God promises his steadfast love because he honestly promises to give it.
[00:18:53] I was talking to my daughter Sarah yesterday, and we were talking about the Puritan Thomas Goodwin.
[00:19:03] And Goodwin wrote a book.
[00:19:07] And in his book, he said, when does a parent show more love? When their child is sick or when they're happy and healthy.
[00:19:22] And we show more love when our children are sick, right? They need more love when they're happy and healthy. We can say, get an ice cream and watch cartoons when they're sick. They have to be. They need special attention. They need special care. All right, if we are human beings, and we know that, don't you think your heavenly Father knows that in your difficulties, it isn't that God loves you less. In fact, he wants to show his love for you more.
[00:19:57] In your most difficult times, in your most trying moments, when life hurts the most. It isn't because God has abandoned you. It's because God is saying, whispering to your shoulder, I'm here. My steadfast love cares for you. I will see you through this. I've got your back. I love you. You are my beautiful child.
[00:20:23] Are you open to hearing this? Church we pray for the promise of his steadfast love because we honestly believe he desires to give it.
[00:20:35] David in this psalm said, I am praying for your steadfast love to comfort me.
[00:20:43] He said that because he believed God wanted to show steadfast love, and he honestly believed that it was the nature of God to do it. All right.
[00:20:54] If life is going to fashion you in a healthy way, it matters what you believe. When life is difficult.
[00:21:02] If you believe when life gets difficult that God is punishing you for something, or if you believe when life is difficult that God doesn't care, or if you believe when life is difficult that somehow or another, God is too busy to help you out in the moment, you miss the benefits of his steadfast love.
[00:21:26] But in the most trying times of life, if you can still your soul and say, I believe you have designed me for my soul to thrive in your steadfast love.
[00:21:42] And now I can't see it in my circumstances, but I know what kind of God you are, and I pray that your steadfast love would comfort me. Church that'll make you a better person.
[00:21:55] I'll bet money on that. That'll make you a better person.
[00:22:02] Then David said, verse 77, let your mercy come to me, that I may live, for your law is my delight.
[00:22:13] Now, there are a variety of words for mercy in the Bible, and I've talked to you about the Septuagint and how it was used by the early church in the Septuagint translation of the psalm. This word that we translate, mercy here, is really the word sympathy, and I'd like to read it that way.
[00:22:35] Let your divine sympathy come to me, that I may live for your law is my delight.
[00:22:45] God designed the human soul to be refreshed by his divine sympathy.
[00:22:53] I want to say that again in the very same way that drinking an ice cold coke on a hot day, your tongue is designed to say, this is awesome.
[00:23:08] In the very same way, your soul is designed by God to experience his divine sympathy and say, this is refreshing.
[00:23:21] This is awesome. This is exactly what I need.
[00:23:27] It is the nature of God to be sympathetic with those he creates.
[00:23:36] If you are God's creative imagination, if what makes you uniquely you comes from the creative imagination of God.
[00:23:46] And he's created a whole system by which you come into being, and he sustains that system. And then when you live in this system, day by day, he meets you and fashions you to be more and more of his perfect idea.
[00:24:03] Then isn't it a little bit easier to believe that his very nature is sympathetic with you because he's already made such a big investment in you?
[00:24:14] Can you hear me, church?
[00:24:16] Why wouldn't he be sympathetic with you when he's already done such a remarkable thing to bring you to the spot you are today?
[00:24:27] It is the character of God to be compassionate to those he is fashioning.
[00:24:34] Now. I want to stop seeing God as a father, and I want to think of him as an artist.
[00:24:42] God is an artist who loves his art.
[00:24:47] God is an artist who loves the process of producing that art.
[00:24:53] He's not the tortured artist who's laying on the floor, pulling out his hair, hating the work. He is a happy artist. He finds joy in the artistry of fashioning you into your full potential. It is his nature.
[00:25:12] You are not a hassle to the creator God. You are a beautiful, delightful, loved being and experience.
[00:25:28] Can you believe that, church? If you only believe in atheistic materialism, there is no pathway to contentment.
[00:25:45] There's no pathway to contentment because all there is is stuff.
[00:25:52] On the other hand, if you can believe in the divine nature of God, not the bully God that you learned about when you were a kid in church, but the true and living God, the God who is a brilliant creator, the God who is fashioning you, the God who has sympathy for you when you don't live up to his expectations, he has sympathy for you.
[00:26:22] He has compassion for you. There is a pathway to real contentment. If you know and trust that kind of God, I want you to look to the great sympathy of God in the development of your character.
[00:26:43] What does that look like? Okay, we're all gonna make mistakes.
[00:26:47] I don't know what mistake I'll make this week, but I guarantee you I'll get there.
[00:26:53] All right? We all going to make mistakes.
[00:26:57] So when I make a mistake, how do I think?
[00:27:03] Well, if I'm not careful, when I make a mistake, I automatically think God is angry with me. And so I better still, I better steer clear of him for a little while.
[00:27:16] Church, it's kind of what we learned by life. People get angry with you. You just kind of steer clear of them for a while.
[00:27:24] All right? But the truth is just the opposite.
[00:27:28] When I make a mistake, God isn't angry with me. He's sympathetic with me.
[00:27:35] He wants me to do better.
[00:27:38] He wants me to experience more of what is delightful in his holy nature.
[00:27:45] He wants me to have a change of the inclinations of my heart so that I don't have to live with the trauma of having failed myself and God. Again, he sympathizes with us.
[00:28:01] Can you believe when you make your worst mistake, the impulse of God's heart toward you is sympathy?
[00:28:12] Or are you stuck in the idea that when you make your worst mistake that somehow or another God is obligated to slap you down?
[00:28:23] Church.
[00:28:26] We can only become the people God wants us to be if we can escape this wrong thinking about God and we can allow him to be our sympathetic heavenly Father, especially when we've made mistakes.
[00:28:51] The human soul is also designed to think, to contemplate and meditate. You know you're thinking all the time, right?
[00:29:03] All day long. There is a running thought process in your head. It's called the stream of consciousness.
[00:29:11] It's going all the time.
[00:29:14] Fact is, it doesn't shut off at night. And that's why you have these wacky dreams, because your stream of consciousness is still going, but it's just going at in a different way. All right, we think all the time. We were designed to think all the time.
[00:29:34] You have to consciously develop skills to quiet your mind if you're not going to think all the time. All right, it's not a question, do we think all the time? It's a question of what am I thinking about all the time.
[00:29:50] Right. You're going to be thinking all the time. And so the question is not am I thinking. The question is, what am I thinking about?
[00:30:00] And the psalmist said, I've learned that if I think about God's guiding ideas more, they have more influence on me.
[00:30:13] The things you think about the most are the things that will guide your life.
[00:30:20] In the proverbs, the proverb has said, as a person thinks in their heart, so are they the thing you think about the most? That's what you become.
[00:30:33] What I contemplate determines who I am.
[00:30:37] So if I want to think about God's guiding idea, if I want to be more of God's best, I have to think about God and his guiding ideas.
[00:30:47] I've talked to you on several occasions about thinking about the nature of God. Have you been trying to do that?
[00:30:57] You're back in school now. This counts on your permanent record.
[00:31:00] All right, I'm trying this again.
[00:31:04] I made markers again, and this time the print's a little bit bigger.
[00:31:11] You can pick these up off the table.
[00:31:15] This is the Westminster confession definition of God, all right? It's not made to read all the way through at once.
[00:31:27] It's made to think, to break up into pieces. Now, let me show you how to do that.
[00:31:33] I'm just going to start on the backside of the marker.
[00:31:39] God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself.
[00:31:46] All right? So I have a few minutes, and I want to think about God. Where do I start? I pick up my little paper, my little marker, and I read, God has all life in and of himself.
[00:31:59] What does it mean that God has all life in and of himself? All right? Now I start thinking about that. What does it mean by life? What kind of life? Intellectual life, emotional life, physical life? Well, all of it.
[00:32:16] Everything we know about life has its origin in God himself.
[00:32:24] All there is of the reality of life has its origin in God himself.
[00:32:32] He has all glory in and of himself. What is glory? Well, what are the things that have the most majesty, the most dignity, the things that are most impressive? Those things originate in and of God. Now, do you see what I'm doing? I'm taking the.
[00:32:51] In my head, I have a vague idea about what do I mean when I think God.
[00:32:57] And instead of living with that vague idea, I'm taking specific ideas and I'm adding that to that. So when I think God, my mind automatically connects it to has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness in and of himself. And I start adding concrete thoughts to the abstract idea of God. Are you following me here, church? Yes.
[00:33:26] Okay.
[00:33:28] So if I want to think about God, I gotta have something to think about. And so the Westminster confession gives me specific thoughts to think about God when I want to think about God. Now, what does that do? When I'm thinking these thoughts about God, it affects the person that I am, because we will become what we think most about.
[00:33:56] If I'm thinking about these qualities of God, then the act of thinking about them rub off on me.
[00:34:05] If I'm not thinking about them, these qualities of God stay nebulous, and they don't have any influence on my character. All right, pick one of these up.
[00:34:18] I'm going to give you a quiz in the future, God fashions us so that we can escape being ashamed.
[00:34:37] Let's just take 1 minute and remember how pleasant it is to be ashamed. Unpleasant.
[00:34:50] You can't talk as much as I do and not make mistakes.
[00:34:55] We've all had the painful experience of being ashamed, haven't we?
[00:35:03] We've all had the painful experience of being ashamed. And it turns out that we can be ashamed in three different contexts.
[00:35:16] I can be ashamed of myself, and no one ever around me ever know it.
[00:35:24] But it's still shame, and it's still unpleasant and it's still haunting everyone in here. This room has a secret that we're ashamed of, and we just keep it tucked away in there. I can be ashamed within myself. Okay, then there's another shame. We fear.
[00:35:43] We are afraid of being shamed by others.
[00:35:47] Everybody has been shamed. Somebody has made you feel ashamed, all right?
[00:35:54] And we don't like that. It's unpleasant.
[00:36:01] But there's a third shame that I. More.
[00:36:05] The older I get, the more I'm sensitive to.
[00:36:10] After God has been so good to me, after he created me out of his creative genius, after he placed me in the world when he did, after he's done everything he's done in my life to make me a better man, after he's blessed me with a job that I've loved for 40, almost 42 years, after he's blessed me with a family that is just ridiculously awesome.
[00:36:43] I have a desire never to make him ashamed that I'm his church.
[00:36:55] I don't want God to be ashamed of me.
[00:36:59] Well, some of you say, well, what makes you think he should be? Listen to what Jesus himself said. If you are ashamed of me in this wicked and an adulterous generation, I will be ashamed of you when I stand in my glory with all my holy angels church.
[00:37:20] God is compassionate, God is sympathetic. God is loving, he's caring.
[00:37:28] But God also has feelings, and he can be.
[00:37:38] He can feel the feeling of being ashamed.
[00:37:43] And I do not want to bring that feeling to the heart of goddesse. I don't want to do it, church.
[00:37:53] But listen what David says.
[00:37:56] David said, all is not lost.
[00:38:00] May my heart be blameless in your guiding ideas that I may not be put to shame. This whole fashioning work of God has a bigger goal, and the goal is that we get to become the kind of beings that there's nothing to be ashamed of.
[00:38:25] Can you hear this?
[00:38:27] The Bible promises that Christ is committed to stand us up on that great day of judgment without spot and without blemish.
[00:38:40] That's what he wants to do. That's what he's working in our lives to do. That's what he's fashioning us to do. That's what this christian life is all about.
[00:38:50] God working in us, fashioning us, remolding us, redeveloping our thinking, purifying our emotions enriching the strength of our will, all of it for the purpose of standing us up before him.
[00:39:13] Totally unashamed, church God is at work. He created you the way he created you. He's fashioning you the way he's fashioning you because he has this great and glorious plan that one day everyone will stand before the Lord God Almighty. And those who have been fashioned by the loving hand of God will stand without spot and without blemish and totally unashamed.
[00:39:47] You can't guilt trip me anymore with your ugly thoughts about the judgment and God humiliating people and everybody groveling and it all miserable.
[00:40:00] You can't intimidate me with that anymore. There is a fashioning God, and it is his loving purpose not to humiliate me on the great day, not to make me sorry and grovel on the great day. It is his purpose to hear me say, blessed be the name of the Lord on that great day.
[00:40:28] It is his purpose to fashion me so that on that great day I kneel and my tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
[00:40:41] There is a fashioning God, and he has a beautiful purpose. And that beautiful purpose is to make us exactly what he created us to be when we stand before him on that great day.
[00:40:55] Our dear heavenly Father, my hope is in you.
[00:41:02] My trust is in you.
[00:41:05] I really believe that you have a good purpose.
[00:41:12] I believe that your nature is much more loving, sympathetic and compassionate than we've ever dreamed of.
[00:41:21] I believe you are committed to using every day of my life to fashion me into the man you designed me to be. So I pray for myself and I pray for this church, and I pray for the people who are online.
[00:41:35] I pray that we would have a more open inclination to the fashioning grace of God. In Christ's name, amen.
