The God Who Pursues

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Today we're closing out a series called Where in the World Did We Go Wrong?

And let me begin just by asking this question.

What comes into your mind when you think about God?

Maybe, like we sang earlier, that he's good, that he's kind, that he's loving, he's forgiving, he's wise, maybe that he's all powerful, he's holy, he's mighty, he's mysterious.

Maybe that he's distant, aloof, impersonal.

What comes into your mind when you think about God?

How do you think God feels when he looks at you?

How do you think he feels when he thinks about you?

Thirty-eight percent of young adults feel never good enough for God.

Forty-seven percent of young adults say they struggle with anxiety and insecurity about how God sees them.

Fifty-seven percent of Christians, just about two out of every three, believe God is mostly disappointed with you.

How do you think God feels when he looks at you most let's say disappointed?

One in three Christians say they feel emotionally distant from God most of the time.

Only 28% consistently feel deeply loved and hated by God.

A.

And that the God of heaven, though exalted in power and majesty, is eager to be friends with us.

Today the sermon title, as we close out our series, is The God Who Pursues.

Go ahead and say that to your neighbor.

Genesis 3 is the story where humanity blew it big time.

We've been walking through that.

Adam and Eve were placed in the garden, placed in perfection, placed in a place where pleasure without perversion, love without distortion, fully known, fully loved.

Life as it was intended to be.

And yet, in a moment of temptation, they believed the lie of the servant.

They took the fruit, they ate.

And shame flooded the garden.

They covered up, they grabbed fig leaves.

Where are my fig leaves?

They're somewhere around here.

There they are.

They grabbed fig leaves to cover up their nakedness.

Yeah.

Okay, I won't, I won't get too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Easy.

Brokenness entered the human story.

And this chapter is often called the fall.

But it's not just the story of where everything went wrong.

It's the story of how God responds to make it right.

How does God respond when we blow it big time?

From the very beginning, he shows us how he responds.

Adam and Eve ate the fruit, their eyes were opened, they hid, and I want you to notice something.

God's first response is that God makes the first move.

How does he respond?

He doesn't wait, he doesn't stand back, he's not aloof.

It says Genesis 3:8.

Genesis 3:8

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And what'd they do?

They hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden, but the Lord God called out to the man, Where are you?

When we blow it big time, what does God do?

He makes the first move.

He didn't wait for Adam and Eve to come to him.

He didn't ghost them.

He didn't avoid them.

He didn't give them the silent treatment.

He didn't cancel them.

He moves towards them and he doesn't just move towards them, he moves towards them in love.

God didn't come storming into the garden.

What did he do?

He came walking in it.

He didn't just barge in like, what's going on?

Actually, by the way, my daughter just got home from college, which is awesome.

And uh I was reminded of this her very first day, moving her in.

Uh, she had two roommates.

They got there a couple days earlier than she did, so they already moved in.

Now, you can imagine a dorm room with three girls and stuff.

And so as they moved in, there were three dressers.

Well, the girls had taken all three dressers.

Ella comes in, she's like, and she's so nice about it.

She's like, Oh guys, do you think I could maybe get one of the three?

Because there's three of us, and if you count it up, like I should get one of those.

And the girls felt terrible.

They're like, Oh, we thought about I'm so sorry.

And so they're like, Absolutely.

She's like, I'll I'll empty out that other one.

I gotta go be with my family uh for lunch, and they'll come back.

Couple hours come back, and all of a sudden, this girl comes in, and then her dad, he storms in.

And literally, first words, never met the man before in my life.

First encounter.

What's going on in here?

Intense.

We're like, woo! My wife, she's amazing.

She's like, hey, I'm Jenny.

God did not storm into the room and go, what's going on in here?

What'd you do?

How could you?

God came in invitationally, where are you?

Where are you?

Because you have moved and our relationship has shifted and changed, like how theologian John Stott says it.

He says, the Bible's not the story of humanity in search of God.

No, but it is of God in search of humanity.

How does God respond when we blow it big time?

God makes the first move, He moves towards you in love every time.

We see it in the garden, and then we see it in Jesus.

Because when you look at Jesus, friends, remember this.

When you look at Jesus, he is the very explanation of God.

If you want to know how God feels about you, look at Jesus.

If you want to know how God responds when you blow it, look at Jesus.

If you want to know how God thinks of sinners, of doubters, of strugglers, look at Jesus.

The Pharisees and religious leaders had a terrible time with Jesus because of this, by the way.

Because what did he do?

He welcomed tax collectors and sinners.

And on one occasion, he tells one of the most famous parables of all time to reveal the God who makes the first move, the parable of the lost sheep.

Begins this way.

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus, but the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered.

I like that word muttered.

This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.

He welcomes them to sit and eat with someone was to accept them.

Not to agree with what they're doing, but to say, you're loved, you're welcome into my presence.

And then Jesus told them this parable.

By the way, the word parable here is singular, but he tells three stories.

These three stories all tell one compelling picture of God's heart for those he came for.

It's the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them.

Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?

Of course he does.

And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home.

Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, Rejoice with me.

I found my lost sheep.

I tell you the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent.

From the garden to Jesus, when we blow it big time, God's first response is, I'm moving towards you in love.

I've come to seek and search for those who are lost.

And I'll go to any lengths for the one who is far away.

He always makes the first move.

Before we decided to look for God, God had already been looking for us.

So Adam and Eve come out of hiding.

Where are you?

I got these fig weaves.

Somewhere.

They're covering up.

Covering up.

They're covered.

Okay.

And Adam responds this way.

We hid because we heard you.

And we were afraid because we were naked.

And then I love God.

He doesn't give this lecture.

He says, Who told you you were naked?

Did you eat from the tree I said not to?

There's like everything you had at your disposal.

Did you do that one thing?

And then and then blame enters the garden.

They just begin to blame one another right after each other.

And here's what's incredible.

In the midst of this moment, something's so stunning because when we make choices, there's consequences to every single choice, and God begins to explain the consequences.

The consequences, the devastation of sin that brought brokenness and pain and relational fracture and distance and ultimately death.

In the midst of just explaining these consequences to those decisions, we see the stunning beauty of hope.

God offers a promise to them.

And he says that he will restore what we've ruined.

God himself will restore what we ruined.

Speaking to the serpent, he says, and I'll put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers, and he'll crush your head and you'll strike his heel.

He's prophesying of one to come, declaring, one will come who will restore and make all things right again.

There is a fracture, and this is where brokenness and pain and evil entered the human story, and God says, I will not leave it undone.

Right after humanity breaks the world, God speaks of one who will come and break the curse.

That he didn't give up on us, but he gave us a redeemer.

Now this is known as the proto-evangelum.

Proto meaning first, evangelum meaning gospel.

This is the very first time the gospel is ever shared in the Bible.

Goes all the way back to Genesis 3.

That in the midst of our darkest moment of our deciding and choosing apart from God, the gospel's being declared.

That's God's promise of redemption, the coming of a Savior who will defeat evil, which is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.

I love this, by the way.

In the garden, God didn't turn to Adam and Eve and said, How are you going to fix this?

Or he didn't even give them a step-by-step guide.

Here's what you need to do to work it out.

God himself will restore what we've ruined.

And the reason is we cannot in and of ourselves fix it.

And he says, I will cover it.

The Apostle Paul picks up on this in 1 Corinthians 15.

He writes, For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man.

For in Adam all die.

In this moment in the garden, death just permeated out, and the brokenness of the world we see all around us.

So in Christ all will be made alive.

A new Adam has come to bring about new creation.

Again, I like what John Stott says, this theologian.

He says, Grace is God loving.

God stooping.

God coming to rescue.

This is grace.

Stooping, coming to rescue.

God giving himself generously in and through Jesus Christ.

How does God respond when we blow up big time?

He makes the first word.

He himself reverses the curse.

He restores what we've ruined.

And then the chapter closes this way.

I love this.

This is amazing.

God closed what we try to cover.

Remember, how could you forget at this point?

The fig reef.

Oh, this is awkward.

Speaks so much more to just their nakedness.

It was the exposure to vulnerability.

The parts of us that we are ashamed of.

The parts of us we're afraid that if anybody sees, they won't love us.

And so we try to cover up.

It's what we do.

And in the garden, God's final moment with them here it says, the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and he clothed them.

Your temporary covering, your effort of stuff that's just gonna fall apart.

There was a sacrifice that needed to be made, and I am going to clothe you.

We cover up with fig leaves all the time today, don't we?

It's our performance.

We're in a performance-driven culture, so if we can just cover up with our performance, other people won't see the real you success or image management.

It's the things that we post, we want, present, we want others.

It's the numbing to just cover up our own internal world.

We keep ourselves so busy so we don't have to even deal with ourselves.

It's the perfectionism.

Now here's what's amazing: this picture, if you do a study, it's really fun.

Do a study of God clothing.

It's actually woven throughout the Bible.

Here we see it in Genesis that God clothes Adam and Eve.

See in Isaiah 61, 10, I love this verse, it says, For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.

Like he took the fig leaves away and he says, I'm going to clothe you and your garment.

It's not just anything, it's the garment of salvation, it's a robe of righteousness.

Like it's being draped on you, my righteousness and my salvation.

And when Jesus tells the Pharisees about the very heart of God, remember the parable, there's three of them: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and then the parable of the lost son.

We know it more as the prodigal son.

The prodigal son, the younger son, tells his dad, and many of us are familiar with it, Dad, give me my inheritance.

Translation, I wish you were dead so I could get what's mine.

Father, rather than denying him, rejecting him, simply says, okay.

Divides his property, gives it to his son, and says that the younger son goes off to a distant land and squanders it on wild living.

And you just fill in the blank of whatever your wild living you would do.

And then a severe famine hits the land, he spent all that he has, and now he is destitute with no support, and he finds himself hungry with no one to help him, and he begins to just like work at a farm, and he's working with these pigs.

And one day, as he looked at the pigs eating the slop, longing just to be able to eat the food that they're eating.

I love this line.

It says, When he came to his senses, there's something for you here of there's a moment in time when you realize that all the direction and the life that you're going down, you realize it is not fulfilling.

In fact, it's only creating more emptiness, and you come to your senses.

He says when he came to his senses, and he's like, even my servants, uh my father's servants eat and live better than I am.

I'm gonna go back to my dad, and I'm gonna tell him, and he prepared this whole speech.

I'm not worthy to be your son, let me be your servant.

This is where we pick up the story.

So he got up and went to his father.

This line is so good.

But while he was still a long way off, every day the father had been looking towards the horizon in the direction that his son left, waiting to see, would a dot appear, and as that dot appeared, would that begin to visualize and see?

Oh, that's the shape, that's the shadow of my son.

I can just catch the characteristics of his walk.

While he was a long way off, the father saw him, filled with compassion, not condemnation.

How did the father feel about his wayward son?

Filled with compassion, he ran to his son and threw his arms around him and kissed him.

See, I think when we are on our way home, when we are headed back, when we think we're returning to God, what keeps us in hiding, friends, is simply this is we don't think God's filled with compassion.

We think his arms are crossed, disappointed.

How could you?

The son then started on his speech, you know.

He prepared this thing, he had a long walk.

It was a pretty good speech, too, you know.

He says, uh the son said to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven against you, I'm no longer worthy to be your son.

But the father said to his servant, he wasn't even listening to the kid's speech.

Quick.

What does he say?

Quick, quick, say that with me.

Quick.

No, no, do it again.

Quick.

Because this is something I missed in the text so many times, and I've preached this text a lot of times.

Quick! Bring the best what?

Robe.

Bring the best robe.

Put a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, bring the fat of calf and kill it.

Let's have a face and celebrate.

For the son of mine was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and he's found.

So they began to celebrate.

Quick.

Think about this.

The father put the best robe on his son before he could get cleaned up.

Yeah, three of you got it.

I missed this.

Where was he before?

He was in a pigstie.

He's dirty.

Long journey.

Tell you what, I'm a little bit of a germaphobe.

You my first word wouldn't have been it would have been quick.

It would have been quick.

Get a bucket.

Let's clean them up.

Quick, right?

I don't know if I want to put this on you.

You're gonna dirty my robe.

That would have been my response.

The father's response.

Don't miss this.

The father response isn't go get yourself cleaned up, and then we'll get you in the robe.

And so many of us think that's how he's responding to us.

He says, quick, get my best robe.

Get my best robe and put it on him just as he is.

Because no matter about what stank he came in with, he's my kid and he has robed in righteousness.

See, I think for most of us as Christians, we understand only part of the gospel.

We understand Colossians 1.27 says it this way.

You know, it's Christ in you, the hope of glory.

And I think we get that part of the gospel, like Christ is in me, right?

Like, okay, uh, the Holy Spirit dwells in me, so I just thought I'd do it more of a visual here of like, here you are.

Cool, look good.

And then we go, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get this, that Christ is in me.

The hope of glory, that's the gospel.

And I'm like, oh, how cool, isn't that awesome?

I'm like, Christ is in me, but then here's how we kind of think of the rest of our life is then we're still a failure.

We're still a sinner.

We're still guilty, shamed.

I couldn't even really write brokenness, but it fits with the word.

And so we know we're saved by grace and saved by Jesus, but we feel like we just suck.

Because it's Christ in me, but I'm in my all my muck.

I'm showing up and I just have all of this around me.

And so, what do you feel when God looks at you?

You're like, look at me.

Of course we feel disappointed.

We think he's disappointed.

Look at me.

It defines me.

Christ may be in me, but look at me.

See, the gospel, yes, Colossians 1.27, Christ in you, the hope of glory, but hang on, let's jump to um Galatians here.

So in Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, say in Christ Jesus.

So it's not just Christ in you, you're in Christ Jesus.

You all are children of God through faith, for all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

See, the gospel is this as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed your sin from you.

As far as the east is from the west, the Psalms tells us that.

Romans 8, 1 says, Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So Christ is in you, yes, friends, but you are in Christ.

Come on, people.

That's the gospel.

That's the gospel.

You are in Christ Jesus, and Christ Jesus is in you.

So the question, how does God feel about you?

How does he feel about you?

He feels about you the same way he feels about his son Jesus.

And when he sees you, he sees his son because you are clothed in Christ Jesus with robes of righteousness.

This is who you are, your standing and position in Christ.

This changes everything.

Oh, friends, if you would just begin to understand that when God sees you, he smiles.

We wouldn't hide, we wouldn't cover up, we wouldn't try to take all these things and fake it till we make it.

We just become like, I'm so loved, I'm so accepted, I've already been covered, it's already been paid for, it's already been separated, and so this is just me.

I'm saved by grace.

I Christ is in me, and I am in Christ, and so I just can't wait to share with you the grace that I've been given.

So let me ask you what would change for you what would change if you actually believe this is your reality.

This is what you're doing.

The old is gone.

The new is gone.

How does God feel about you?

He made the first move.

He restores what we've ruined.

And he clothes what we try to cover up.

You may notice at the end of our services, almost every week, part of the benediction, I say to you, You're loved.

You're loved by God.

It's not because I don't really know what to say.

It's like, oh shoot, I forgot to plan that part.

He's stuck on repeat again.

When you understand you are the beloved and the father's arms are open wide, you will experience the power and the transformation of the gospel in your life like you never have before.

And so I'm gonna invite you as the band comes up and they're gonna sing of the goodness of God, and that his goodness is running after you.

He's pursuing you in love.

And I'm gonna ask Christians, would you be wrecked by the gospel again today?

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, that you would be wrecked by his love, wrecked by his grace, overwhelmed in this moment, that you would believe it to your core, that would move from head knowledge to heart reality.

And you just invite him, Jesus, would you help me to believe it?

Would you help me to believe it?

And would you repeat it and repeat it and repeat it?

I am the beloved, I am a daughter, and I am a son of the King Most High.

I am robed with righteousness.

Some in this room you've never said yes to Jesus.

You had no idea that God loves you.

And in this moment, I want to invite you.

Would you say yes to him?

It's so simple.

He's the God who came for you.

It's that moment when we come to our senses, when we recognize our need, we long to return home.

And we just simply say, Jesus, would you come into my life?

If that's where you're at, I just want to pray a simple prayer.

Prayer is just a conversation with God.

Would you pray after me?

Heavenly Father, I believe you love me.

I believe you came for me.

I believe you died for me to rescue me, to break the bondage of brokenness, sin, and death.

I believe you rose again to new life that I might have life.

I'm tired of trying to cover up and measure up fakeness.

I need you.

Jesus, would you come into my life and make me?

If you wouldn't mind with eyes closed, head bowed, if that's right where you're at.

I just would love to know if you'd be able to pray for you.

Would you raise your hand up high if you said yes to Jesus for the very first time?

Go ahead and raise him up high.

The parable of the sower of the lost son in the coin says that heaven rejoices.

Every time one person experiences his grace.

So we rejoice with you.

Jesus, in this moment, as we worship, I ask for your presence to overwhelm us with your love.

Anchor deep our identity in you.

In Jesus' name.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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