How About God?

This text was originally published by UCCF, Leicester (1980).

These four talks are based on a passage in the New Testament. It would be very well worth the trouble getting a New Testament, hunting up the passage and reading it. You will find it in the part called the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, verses 16–31.

How about God?

Mind me asking a question? How about God these days? They say he’s dead, at least some people do. It sounds rather odd to me, I must say, for if he’s dead now, he must surely have been alive earlier on, and a God who was alive yesterday and has died today isn’t God at all, is he? I suspect that what these people really mean is that for a good many people God might as well be dead. They believed in him once, maybe, in a vague sort of way, but now the idea of God has just gone cold on them and doesn’t mean anything anymore.

The trouble is that when people lose living faith in God, consciously or unconsciously, they start making other gods, substitute gods. I don’t mean those hideous looking objects that some people in some societies make; we moderns wouldn’t put our faith in anything so silly. But, for all that, humans still have to have something they can pin their faith to, to make life successful or meaningful. They still seek something to live for, some ultimate purpose to devote their powers and love to. And the tragic fact is that if this something is something other than God, it is an idol and it is bound in the end to let them down. It’s easy for us to see this with a stone or wooden idol; how could it ever help them? They made it out of a tree. The odd bits and pieces of wood from the tree they put on the fire and cooked their breakfast with them; the main bit they carved into an idol. Oh, I know, to them it looked impressive, and doubtless the neighbours stood aback in amazement at this latest achievement of art and technology. But how could it ever save a person? It was, after all, merely the work of their own hands, the product of their brains, the best they could do, the best they could think, in a word, their own effort. And what the people sorely needed was something to help them when they had got to the end of their effort, the end of themselves, the end of their strength, the end of their wisdom, in fact when they had no effort left. And here by very definition the gods that were the work of their own hands obviously couldn’t save them.

Now I suppose it is hard for us to see that the same is true about our modern idols, for they are so much more refined, more impressive. Take science, for instance; many people spell it with a capital ‘S’ and regard it as some great mysterious power that is going to solve all our problems in life. This is quite mistaken. In this sense there is no such mysterious power as ‘Science with a capital S’. All there is is scientists, men and women, clever of course, but only men and women; people who, using exact methods of measurement, try to understand and describe this physical world of ours. Their work is good and its results exceedingly profitable, but in the ultimate sense they cannot save us. The work is but the work of men and women’s brains. Indeed, it sometimes adds to our difficulties rather than solves them. Scientists have given us the atomic bomb; but if we ask whether it is morally right to use the bomb or not, science as such has no answer to give.

So people set up ideals, pin their faith to them—courage, love, purity; the ancients did the same, of course, only they went further and made images of them. But the trouble with ideals is that other people defy them and smash them, and we ourselves very often offend even against our own ideals. And what can an ideal do to save a man or woman who is in trouble precisely because he or she has broken the very ideals they have set before them? Ideals are very fine as goals to aim at; but when a man or woman stands, as so many do, amid the shattered pieces of a broken life and of broken ideals, then they find that ideals as such have no power to rid them of their guilt, or to remake them. They rather depress them.

In this fix many people turn to religion. But religion, unfortunately, can be as big and disappointing an idol as any, if we are not careful. If our religion is of the kind that simply exhorts us to do our best, try our hardest, even if what we are trying to do is God’s law, then so far as it all depends on what we are trying to do, it is simply a case of trusting the work of our own hands, isn’t it?

So our modern idols turn out to be no better than the old wooden ones; and the thing that distinguishes all idols from the true and living God is that a man or woman in the end has to carry his or her idols, but with the living God, it is God that carries the man or woman. ‘Picture an ancient village,’ says God through the prophet Isaiah, ‘where the people have put their trust in wooden idols. One day their enemies attack, and just as the villagers are ready to flee and escape, they have to stop and take down their huge images and pack them on the already overladen transport. Instead of helping them to escape, their idols push them down further into the mud.’ The real battles that we are interested in in this context, however, are battles against jealousy and envy and hatred and anger and lust and a thousand such things that ruin our lives and our world. No effort of our own, let history teach us, is enough to carry us through; but God our creator can. ‘Listen to me,’ he says, ‘I have made; I will carry . . . Look unto me and be saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else.’

The forgiveness that we so much need, then, is not a something I earn by anything I do, it is something that Christ has obtained for me by what he has done at the cross. The power to remake myself, to achieve that spiritual regeneration without which I cannot enter God’s kingdom, is not something that I work out, it is something that God’s Holy Spirit does for me and in me. These things are gifts. God is waiting to give them.

Friend, are you in some spiritual trouble? Have you, in fact, got to the end of your own strength, and haven’t any more strength to think out any more answers? Have the things you pinned your faith to let you down? This is just where God is waiting to help you, to show you his power, show you his salvation. Why not seek him? Why not come to him through Jesus Christ our Lord? Why not trust him? I ask you then, what about God?

Where do you keep your God?

Mind me asking you another question? Where do you keep your god? Now, of course, I don’t suggest that you have got a shelf full of gods in your lounge. I mean it somehow different. Let me illustrate. The other week I met a man whose serenity, peace of mind, zest for living and general gusto impressed me very much, and I took the liberty of asking his secret. He said he’d met God, that he’d received Christ into his life. I asked him how it happened. He said some years ago his life had got generally into a mess that he himself couldn’t clear up, and he began to think it was time he sought for God. So he began reading the Bible, he talked to Christian people, and then one day at work, he said, the experience came. God, so to speak, made himself known to him, and he was able to trust God’s word and receive Christ into his life. And evidently, from what I could see, this had made a permanent difference to him. But the interesting thing is that on that particular day, when he went home and told his wife what had happened, she said, ‘You don’t mean to say you’ve got converted, do you? You’ve not got saved?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think I have.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘you can’t. You can’t get saved in a factory, you have to get saved in a church.’

So you see some people still think like that. They think of God as being confined to some especially holy place. And that, you know, is potentially harmful. It can divide our lives up in a rather dangerous way, so that we think that we go to church on Sunday and pay God a visit, and then, when we come out, we leave him there and live the rest of the week away from him. Of course, when we go to visit God on special days, we behave well, because we are in his presence; and yet on other days, because we feel we are not in his presence in the same way, we feel free to misbehave. The whole idea is childish. God sees us everywhere, and really we can’t keep out of God’s way by not turning up in church on a Sunday.

More than that, it’s sad, isn’t it? It can be tragic, when people don’t realize that God is at their very elbow, and that in him they live and move and have their being. I’ve seen folks in need of peace and forgiveness trying to find God by climbing a mountain barefoot, by making a journey to some holy city. What a pathetic tragedy, when all the while God is at our very side, a very present help in time of need. I know in days long ago God told men to build him temples on earth where he would come down and live among them in a special place; but that was God telling us, when the race was young, that he really wanted our friendship, wanted to come and live amongst us. Nowadays the temples God wishes to live in are human hearts, every human heart. In that deepest part of us that’s really us, there is a shrine, and in that shrine a throne. In too many hearts, on that throne sits ‘self’, or some other idol. Now God wants that throne, God wants to occupy that shrine; God wants to spread the lustre of his presence and friendship and holiness throughout our whole lives by coming to dwell in our hearts.

Now, of course, we mustn’t think that because God is everywhere he is automatically in our hearts. God respects our privacy, God respects our free-will; and many a heart is closed and bolted against God by sin unrepented of, or by years of wilful or careless neglect of God. That’s why for so many folks life has become somewhat empty and meaningless, it has lost its shine, its lustre. But then that’s why Christ pictures himself as standing outside our heart’s door and knocking, seeking for admission. He wants to come in and to clear things up. He wants to give us new strength. He wants to be our Lord and God.

So let’s get this clear, if we can. It is so tremendously important, this business of receiving Christ into our hearts. It doesn’t mean doing a bit of work for him. After all, there’s many a man in a factory who does a lot of work for the boss, but he’s never yet asked the boss into his home. He might be afraid the boss wouldn’t approve, or the boss might want to command things. And, you know, it is strange how many people are ready to do a bit of work for Christ and the church, who as yet have not really asked him into their lives. And yet, this is the most important thing, that we ask him into our lives. Some people don’t even know they can. They think of God as a long way off in his heaven. Now while it is true that those who trust Christ will one day be taken to God’s heaven, anyone who hopes to get into God’s heaven must in this life open his heart and make Christ a home in that heart now.

Tell me, friend, I wonder are you finding life empty. I wonder has failure or bereavement robbed life of its meaning. Has the lustre and shine gone? Could it be, I wonder, that all this is because you have never asked Christ in, and that Christ is really still outside your life? I ask you then, where do you keep your god?

How expensive is your God?

May I ask you a question? How expensive is your god? Sounds a very funny way of putting things, but it seems to me that is how some people think of God. They seem to regard him as a kind of heavenly landlord, who very naturally has claims upon us, because he made our world and has hired it out to us. But if we pay him our spiritual rates and taxes in the coin of good behaviour and charitable contributions with a hymn or two now and again, then he will be satisfied and all will be well.

It’s a gross mistake, of course! God just isn’t like that. How the idea arose I wouldn’t be sure. It seems to me as if, perhaps, people began to feel grateful to God for his many gifts and felt they wanted to give him something in return. That was all very fine, but gradually, the idea has grown up that by our good behaviour and charitable acts we are somehow paying God, and buying or meriting his love and forgiveness and friendship, and if we pay him enough, perhaps we might even buy a seat in his heaven. It can’t be! Everything we’ve got that is worth having comes from him anyway. In this sense we can’t give him anything, we can’t buy anything from him, and, thank God, we have no need. Eternal life, the Bible says, is a gift.

Someone, I know, will want to say, ‘Oh, but we do have to keep God’s law, surely.’ Quite so, but it is most important to see why we have to keep it and what for. It is certainly not to gain God’s acceptance. The Bible tells us that bluntly. We cannot gain acceptance from God by keeping his law. The fact is that we are bankrupt anyway. When we have done our best, there is still a gap left, we have come short, and we simply haven’t anything with which to fill the gap. God’s law is rather like a thermometer, given to us so that it might show us how serious our spiritual disease is. But nobody swallows a thermometer to get better! And whereas God’s law can show us how sinful we are, it is not the thing that does the saving, the curing, the forgiving. That is something that only Christ can do. Thank God, Christ is willing to give us his love, his forgiveness, his eternal life, his regeneration as a gift. Listen to what the New Testament says, in the second chapter of Ephesians—‘By grace are you saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man should boast’ (verses 8–9).

It seems to me that it is from lack of seeing that God’s salvation is a gift, that religion has gone sour on a good many people. The idea of being good for what we can get out of God is nauseating anyway. In the chapter 4 of the Gospel of John, Christ talked to a Samaritan who was seated on a well-side one day. She was a woman whose life had broken up in rather a big way, and in her need, religion had gone sour on her. Her idea was that religion is what we give to God, and Christ revolutionized her life by showing her that true religion begins not with what we give to God, but with what God gives to us. ‘Good woman,’ he said, ‘if only you knew the gift of God, and who it is that speaks to you, you would have asked of him and he would have given you living water’ (verse 10).

But somebody will object, ‘Didn’t Christ also say that we’ve got to count the cost if we want to be one of his disciples? Yes, he most certainly did; and it is the fact, even today in some countries, that if you profess Christianity you stand in danger of losing your neck. If you want salvation therefore, you’ve got to be prepared to lose your neck. But even if you do lose your life, it doesn’t mean that this merits God’s forgiveness or salvation. Moreover, Christ made it abundantly clear that if a man receives salvation as a gift, then Christ will put before him a Christian discipline that will expect of him daily sacrifice, the sacrificing of his whole self to God. But at the same time he makes it clear that whatever sacrifice a Christian makes, he doesn’t do it to buy God’s favour or to keep hold of God’s salvation. He does it simply for love of God who has given him forgiveness and salvation freely.

It doesn’t mean either that salvation is cheap. What we could never have bought, Christ has obtained for us, but obtained only at the cost of his own life and sacrifice at the cross.

Friend, I wonder if perhaps your spiritual resources in life have begun to run out, and you are feeling bankrupt, and yet somehow you’ve despaired of religion. You’ve tried it before, but you despair of its being any help. Perhaps it could be, could it, that you’ve never heard that God has a gift to give you, that true religion begins by asking Christ for his gift of eternal life and receiving it? Perhaps you’ve never asked, therefore you don’t really have this gift. Could it be, I wonder, that your God is not the true God of the Bible, the God of Jesus Christ, at all; but he is simply an idol of your own imagining, very expensive to keep up? Tell me, friend, how expensive is your God?

Would your God send anybody to Hell?

You will probably explode when I ask this question, feel a little insulted maybe. However, would your God ever send anybody to hell? Go on then, explode. Tell me that you are not a sadistic semi-pagan, worshipping a God served by demons with pitchforks, stuffing people down into the flames. Tell me your God is a God of love, who would never be unkind to anybody, and certainly wouldn’t send anybody to hell; and that if he did, then you couldn’t possibly believe in him.

Well, I thought as much actually. But half a minute! Who, by the way, said God was a God of love? Who told us he was? Wasn’t it Jesus Christ our Lord? Wasn’t it he more than anybody ever who not only told us that God is a God of love but made us feel it in our hearts? And when it comes to loving our neighbours, wasn’t it Jesus Christ, who by his heavenly conduct showed us what true love of one’s neighbour really means? Yes, it was Jesus who told us that God was a God of love, and yet the Bible plainly says that there is coming a day when this same Jesus Christ is going to judge the world in righteousness. And in chapter 25 of Matthew’s Gospel, Christ himself told us that when he divides the sheep from the goats, the goats will go away, so he said, into everlasting punishment. It must be quite clear that Christ himself saw no contradiction here between a God who loves and a God who will punish sin.

Actually, I think we ourselves don’t see any fundamental contradiction. Take this man, for instance. He has a beautiful twenty-year-old daughter whom he adores. Now this daughter has a young man who takes her out now and again in his sports car. But unfortunately he’s one of those young men who like showing off, and he is a bit irresponsible, likes doing stunts when it’s not appropriate, and father-in-law-to-be has often talked to him about this. On this particular night, before they set out, he particularly pleads with him to go carefully. But he picks up a lot of friends, they’re a bit merry, and they are tearing down a road at about a hundred miles an hour when they smash into a tree, and the daughter is killed. Now tell me, what is father going to say about it all? Is he going to say it doesn’t matter? Certainly not. If ever he loved the girl, he will hate with all his heart the irresponsibility, the disobedience, the folly, the carelessness, the selfishness that murdered the girl’s life.

And so it is with God. He hates sin because he loves us; he loves us and therefore he hates sin that ruins us, and makes us insult God and therefore ruins our relationship with God. What then if a man won’t repent of his sin? Will God in the end turn sentimental and say it doesn’t matter? Of course he won’t. The real reason why we try to play this side of things down, I fancy, is because in our heart of hearts we all have the uncomfortable knowledge that we have sinned. It is not a question of a hypothetical Mr. Jones, or even the man next door, that has sinned. We have sinned, and if God has punishment for sin, then, so to speak, we are in the line for it. How are we to get out of the line?

Well, certainly not by pretending that sin doesn’t matter, not by such unrealism. Nor by hoping that God one day is going to turn sentimental. There is a way out, and that way out is through God’s love. We’ve heard it before, I know, but perhaps if sin has shaken you and you’ve found out what the inside of your heart is really like, then perhaps this is going to sound different. John’s Gospel tells us, ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish’ (chapter 3, verse 16). God hated our sin; he loved us, and the Bible says that he did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; and that Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that God can be perfectly just and yet forgive us, the sinners.

And God is kinder than we think. There are a good many people who think that God is a kind of university examiner, who has set us ‘Life’ as an examination, but the results of our efforts are not going to be declared until the final judgment day. And so life is one long suspense, we never can be sure what the outcome is going to be. That, of course, is horrible. God certainly isn’t like that. God is a God of love. He’s not only prepared to forgive us for Christ’s sake, but he wants us to know here and now that we are forgiven. Our Lord himself told his startled contemporaries that on the day of judgment, he himself, that is Christ, is going to be the judge and he appealed to them to listen and to believe him. ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you,’ he says in John’s Gospel, chapter 5, ‘he that hears my word and believes on him that sent me has eternal life and shall not come into condemnation, but is already passed over from death to life’ (verse 24).

After all, God doesn’t hold court on our lives every day; he doesn’t set up his throne each night and say, ‘Well now, let’s deal with today’s sins and I will forgive you so far,’ and then tomorrow repeat the process. There is only going to be one judgment. The Epistle to the Hebrews, verse 27 of chapter 9, says, ‘It is appointed unto men once to die and after death comes the judgment’. And just as there is only one judgment, so says the Bible, Christ has once died. And he only needed to die once, for when he died that once, he died for all our sins; and the man that repents and trusts the Saviour may know it on God’s authority that that one sacrifice of Christ has cleared all his lifetime’s every sin in view of that one final judgment.

What happens if a person rejects God’s love? A man did it once; his name was Judas. Christ gave that man everything that God could give a man, his love and friendship; and yet Judas determined to reject him. As a last-minute gesture, Christ, in oriental fashion, offered him the bread of his friendship. The man took the bread, but rejected the friendship; and Christ’s broken-hearted comment on the man was this, ‘It would have been better for him never to have been born.’ The love of God is not such a cheap thing that you can refuse it and it makes no difference.

I wonder what kind of a God yours is. Is he a God of love who sent his Son to die for you personally? Have you heard his voice speaking his forgiveness and peace in your heart? Do you know yourself secure now and for ever in his love? I wonder what kind of God yours is. Is he the God that loves so much, whose love is so infinitely significant, that if a man rejects it, it spells eternal disaster? Would your God send anybody to Hell?