Passage: John 6:63
Preacher: Rev. Joel Beyer
Series: Seven Rules Every Christian Should Break
Keywords: emotion , faith , truth , mysticism
Summary:
The Devil’s Lie: Emotion leads to faith.
God’s Truth: Faith leads to emotion.
Detail:
I hear the story from parents and grandparents all the time. My high-school-aged son was so on fire for God! He used to sing Christian music, play games with the youth group, he even went on missionary trips to feed the poor and build houses. But then he got mixed up with the wrong crowd and his faith flew out the door. My daughter had a real, living Spirit-filled faith! She sang in the praise band, helped with the children’ s ministry, and even wrote poems about God’ s love and how it made her feel to know that God cared. But then she went to college, and after taking some classes, she began to doubt. They told her that Christianity was sexist, exclusive, and intolerant. She won’ t even come to church with me anymore when she’ s home. And it isn’t just happening to young adults. It can happen to middle age people and seniors, too. Christians who were once “on fire” are burning out. How can this be?
Jesus knew about this problem. He once told a story about it. He said the Christian faith was like seeds being planted. Many would believe in Him, but for too many, their faith would then die. The cares and trials of this world would overwhelm them. Missionaries for atheism or Buddhism or some secret mystery spirituality would find them and convince them they could get a better deal than Jesus somewhere else. Their fire and passion for God would burn out, and they would doubt. They would be thirsty, but no one would give them water. They would wither. They would die. Their faith in Christianity would be BROKEN.
These stories are nothing new. Long before roots of faith dry up under persecution, danger, or cultural temptations, the devil first tries to destroy faith by swooping in and making us forget about the Sower’ s seed. He convinces you that others have a spirituality that you don’t have. That the world has a truth that the Bible can never give you. That faith in God is outdated, uncool, too exclusive and narrow minded. He snatches the seed before it ever has a chance to plant roots in the profound truth of God. And he does it by lying. He did it to Adam and Eve, and he does it to us.
And if we are to avoid the Lies of Satan, we must learn the ways he dresses up his lie, because it’s never obvious to us. He has a recipe book of spices and tricks that sound and feel so familiar to us and have been taught even in many churches, that they should be “Christian”. But they’ re not. They’ re anything but. They teach a false spirituality, one that doesn’t preach Jesus Christ crucified for your sins so that you can be made right with God, as is the heart of Christian spirituality, but that You are the god of yourself. You know better than God. All the problems you have? You can fix yourself if you just try hard enough. And there is only one tactic that the devil uses to destroy true Christian spirituality – he must remove Jesus. And in order to remove Jesus he removes the very way that Jesus reigns: by removing Jesus ’ words. ’ s Word all the more.
And so this morning we’ re going to start this series of breaking “Christian” rules that aren’ t actually Christian at all with a rule that many have fallen for, including the young men and women that I’ ve mentioned just a minute ago. And that rule is this: “You can find God in your heart. ” In other words, you can know God’s will by how you feel about God and how you perceive his external action in your life because God is inside you. Now at first glance, this doesn’ t seem so erroneous does it? Doesn’ t the Bible say that the Holy Spirit lives in our heart? Yes! It does! But the Spirit is there not to draw you into your own heart or your feelings or thoughts to know God and His will, but to sustain a faith in you that clings to the promises of Jesus in His Word. Because the truth is that though the Holy Spirit is with us, there is also something else living inside us as well. Our sinful nature is just as active, and if we’ re not careful, we can easily confuse God’ s truth for our own sinful thoughts or emotions. And yet many people still believe that they can perceive God’ s will and nature through subjective experiences or how they feel. And so instead of clinging to the truth of the Scriptures, we look for ways to experience God apart from His Word. This practice of attempting to know God through emotional experience is called Mysticism and it is probably the most prevalent form of false spirituality around today.
Let me give you an example. A few years ago, a pretty big popular church put out a video for youth. In this video, a young man is walking on a black top basketball court. The video was marvelously edited and edgy with time-lapse photography and deep meditative music. Light day shifts from midday to late afternoon while the music swells and tears at your heart before even a word is muttered. “I was in a real dark place.” He says, “I grew up in Church, but I didn’ t know if God was real. I was alone one afternoon, walking out on a playground.” The music grows more raw. You feel for him. “Then, just as I was really questioning and doubting, a cloud covered the sun completely and left me all alone in the darkness. And it was like…It was like God had abandoned me.” “But then! Right then when I was ready to give up, the sun came out!” His happiness is tangible. “I could feel the sun’ s warmth on my face, and I knew, I just knew! I knew that God was there.” That was it. It was cleverly made video, but it really made no reference to “Which God!? was actually there” This young man had just made his peace with his spirituality by learning how to worship…the sun. The sun coming out from behind the clouds was the sign that he needed to know that God was there. On the one hand, I’ m thrilled that his faith was restored, and I know in his heart, his faith is not in the sun, but in Jesus. But let me ask you this…what if instead of sun, the skies opened up in a downpour. What if cloud cover just rolled in and it stayed dark? This young man was willing to base the truth of his entire faith on a sign from a pretty common weather pattern. He, like many of us, want to experience and feel God on-demand as a sign of his presence. The problem? We ’ re not promised signs from God apart from what He’s promised in His Word. Because that ’s really what ’s going on when we rely on how you feel about your faith …we ’re asking God for a sign that he ’s living in your heart, but signs don ’t always come, and feelings never last.
Even Jesus, who was able to produce signs and wonders realized this problem of the human heart. John Chapter 6 is dedicated to his miracle of feeding 5000 families with nothing but 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Because of this sign done in their midst, he had a lot of followers! They had just experienced a God-moment, a high, can you imagine the conversations that were taking place? The were in the presence of someone along the same line as the prophet Moses who was able to call down bread from heaven, called manna, in the wilderness some 2000 years prior. They came back the next day, and yet instead of being satisfied, they demanded another sign. They wanted to see and feel and experience the power of God. And yet, Jesus didn’ t give them one. Because what Jesus knew and what we get to see taking place is that feelings don’ t last. They crave another high. Jesus wanted to give them words of eternal life, but many turned away, unimpressed with truth, because words did little to excite them. They wanted a sign. They wanted to feel the high of being with a miracle worker. And when Jesus didn’t produce on demand, many deserted him. Later, Jesus is hanging out with his disciples, and he explains to them why other disciples are leaving. He says,
John 6:63 - It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
Jesus’ Words are the true power. While he showed them that he could produce bread out of thin air, His promise to them that HE was the bread of life and all who eat of Him, metaphorically, by believing in Him, will never hunger again. The truth that He revealed to them by the hand of God is a pure relationship with the Creator of the Universe through nothing but simple faith and trust. While sings are temporary, Jesus promise of eternal life with God forever is for all people in all time, sign or not. But he still asked his disciples, are you guys going to leave too? And Simon answered…
John 6:69 – Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.
It wasn’ t Jesus power and fame, and ability to do miracles that caused the disciples to follow him, to eventually lay down their own lives for him, it was his words. It was his promises that held true even after they could no longer see him or hear him. They had his Word forever. His promise of eternal life because of what he would do on the cross for us. Christian spirituality lives from the teaching that Jesus is the place where man is one with God and God is one with us. He took in Himself fall our reliance on trying to mystically experience and feel and know God on our own and he let that idol in our hearts be nailed to him on a real cross. And giving up his Spirit, His real, mortal human heart was pierced through until water and blood flowed from his dead body onto our parched and thirsty ground. And then he didn’ t stay dead.
We know the story, right? But do we KNOW the story? What we sometimes forget that Gods act of saving the world didn’ t happen in me, but outside of me. That’ s the message. That’ s the Word. That’ s the true, real, story of humanity and our relationship with our creator. Our history is not the experience of every individual Christian’s experience with God alone, but an entirely shared faith—not a feeling, but a believed reality. One set of facts, one result from those facts. One faith. One Lord. One Baptism. True Christian spirituality is so beautiful because it ’ s completely certain, ALL THE TIME. We don ’ t have to worry about how how close we feel to God on any given day, or how “Spirit-filled ” we feel, or whether our lives show miraculous signs of God’ s Presence. We have something greater than all of those subjective feelings and experiences. We have a real God who spoke real words of truth, who truly died in front of the whole world, and then proved himself to be true to rising from the dead and promising the same to all who believe him. We have been truly filled with the Spirit of God as a free gift as we heard the word of God and He made it alive in us, fully, completely, without doubt. As a professor once told me, “You are as close to God right at this very moment as you ever have been and you ever will be. Those are some comforting words!
Let me ask you this… Are you always excited to come to church? Be honest. I’m not! Are you always thrilled to open your Bible and dive into God’s Word? Have you hung on my words each and every week as I preach the Gospel to you? Are you enthusiastic to pray each and every day, every single time? No, we’re not. But that’s okay! The pressure to “feel” spiritual is taken away by the certain promise that Jesus is here to forgive and to restore, no matter how we may feel. Even if your kids can’t sit still and you can’t concentrate fully in your chair, God’s Word is still working on your heart. And his visible Word, the bread which we are about to break is the promise of God’s Presence to strengthen us, whether or not it feels especially spiritual. That’s how God works. He gives and gives and gives according to His Promises even when we aren’t jumping for joy about it. The Devil ’ s Lie: Emotion leads to faith.’ s Truth: Faith leads to emotion.
Emotions aren’ t evil. They’ re a wonderful gift of God. They’ re a beautiful part of being human. I can’t tell you how excited I get when a juicy in-and-out burger is placed before me, or when I hug my wife at the end of a long day, or when my children smile at me, or when the football season starts again. Those are beautiful things. I can’ t imagine a Christian who does not feel some emotion about Jesus and what He did. Every Christian feels sad over sin and disease and death, perplexed over failure, joyful over forgiveness, relieved at the sight of the cross, exhilarated over new insight into the Scriptures, a sense of incredible excitement over the positive hope of heaven in the arms of Jesus. The problem isn’ t with emotions, it’ s when emotions and experiences become the litmus test for whether God is real and with us and for us, instead of the true and certain, comforting and compelling Words of Jesus. The words the devil would love to have us forget. Emotion cannot be prescribed and it can’ t be a barometer for faith. Feelings are good, but feelings can never be the gospel. The Gospel is that God is with us despite our ups-and-downs life. And that is good news.
May you believe that your faith is secure, not because of your effort to feel God, but because of the power of His Word.
*Series based on the book Broken: 7 ''Christian'' Rules That Every Christian Ought to Break as Often as Possible by Jonathan Fisk
