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Part 4 of 7
Identity Theft Series
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Jesus says in John 10:10, "The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I've come that you might have life and have that more abundantly." Jesus didn't just come to save lost lives. He came to save the life that was lost. We believe the Bible is the blueprint to that best life.
We're continuing a conversation from the book of Ephesians on a series called "Identity Theft." In Ephesians 1:15-17, Paul reveals one of his most powerful prayers:
"For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God's people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know him better."
This prayer is not a prayer of release—it's a prayer of revelation. It's a prayer for God to disclose something. Paul is praying for God to show the Ephesians God.
The Ephesians were already saved, but Paul was praying for their sight. He knew their spiritual experience would be impacted by their spiritual awareness. The God you see is actually the God you get. You can never see or experience God right if you keep seeing him wrong.
For many of us, it's not an inaccurate view of God—it's just an incomplete one. We need the fullness of God, the revelation of who God is. We have to be careful not to get stuck on the version of what God was, and miss who God is. Some of us are imprisoned by previous revelation, experiencing spiritual incarceration as a result.
We believe in progressive sanctification and progressive revelation. As it relates to your sanctification journey, you will have spurts of supernatural acceleration, but not all of your spiritual formation will be supernatural acceleration. Some stuff you're going to have to put in time for. It's progressive.
Some stuff you can't fix because you don't even see it needs to be fixed yet. There are things about us that we can't see that God has to show us at some point. God is so much God that he cannot reveal all that he is to us at one time. Over the course of time, God consistently reintroduces himself to us.
They're saved, so they have some revelation of who God is. They have some experience with who God is. But Paul prays this prayer because he wants them to consistently experience revelation of who God is. The revelation is going to produce a revolution in your own life. For many of us, the God we have is a God we've been given.
The therapeutic God is the God whose primary job is to make you feel better. But if you pull the religious language away, what you're actually describing is something called hedonism—an ancient philosophy that says the highest goal of human existence should be the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain.
The problem with this view is that the entirety of our faith rests on the revelation of a suffering savior and a God who actually uses suffering to sanctify us. We actually become better through things that don't feel good.
One of the things we have to remember is that the promises and the blessings of God are not pain and problem free. The gospel is not a gospel of avoidance. It is a gospel of overcoming.
Just because we serve the Lord doesn't necessarily mean that he will allow us to avoid some suffering and pain. But he allows us and makes us go through it in order to do something. The psalmist said:
"It was good that I was afflicted that I may learn your ways and your statutes."
There were some things the psalmist wouldn't have learned if God would not have allowed them to go through a season of hurt and pain.
Even Jesus learned obedience through the things he suffered. If a perfect person had to experience pain in order to be ushered into another degree and dimension of obedience, then what would make us assume as imperfect people that we won't have to experience inconvenience?
The writer of Hebrews says:
"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but it's painful. Later on, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."
God uses pain to train. I didn't say he even causes all the pain, but he will use the pain to train.
The language you use to describe God's redemptive work through pain and suffering impacts whether pain is used to propel people forward or paralyze and keep them stuck. The language you use is shaping or revealing a theology.
When we talk about loss and pain, we have to be careful about the language we use because it's revealing our theology about God. We didn't say who caused the loss. Sometimes Christians confuse having an explanation with being effective in offering hope.
I can show you where Jonah goes through a storm because he disobeyed God. Then I can show you that the disciples went through a storm because they obeyed. Same storm. Different source. Here's what we know: God used them both. So instead of focusing on cause, we need to focus on usage—and how God wants to use the pain to train.
We don't say things like "God took your mother" because we know death as we understand it now is a consequence of living in a fallen world. Creation is not flourishing the way God intended, which is why all of creation is groaning. Death is a consequence of a fallen world that is not operating the way that God intended.
But it leads us to a glorious hope of another one. You can't get stuck on the revelation of who you thought Jesus was. You got to be open to who Jesus can be.
When you have a therapeutic view of God, you have a pain-formed theology, and a trauma theology. Your theology is informed by trauma. This says: "I should not have had to go through this. And if he loved me, he would not have let me go through this."
But what Lazarus shows us in the text is that Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters because he wept. But when he heard that Lazarus was sick, rather than going immediately, he stayed where he was two more days. This seems to be inconsistent with love.
But sometimes God has to love us enough to leave us in what is going to kill us. He loved him enough to let him die. And sometimes God loves us enough to let us go through the pain and the suffering that he's going to use on the other side to train us. It feels like he's killing you sometimes when he's using you.
There are two types of usage. There's when God uses your gifts, which is the usage we prefer. But there's another aspect of divine usage—it's not just gift usage, it's life usage. Life usage sometimes leaves you in a tomb for four days, and an audience gathers so that the same people that watch you go in are the same people around that are going to watch you come out as a demonstration of God's ability to perform resurrection.
Jesus says about that same situation with Lazarus:
"This sickness is not unto death, but so that the Son of Man might be glorified."
I'm going to get glory not just through the usage of your gift. I'm going to get glory through the usage of your life. So I'm going to allow an audience to form around your adversity. I'm going to make people aware of your adversity, and they're going to see you go in the tomb. And then the same people that saw you go in are going to be the same people that I let see you come out—not so they think differently about you, but so they think differently about me.
God reserves to use whatever he owns. He doesn't just own your gifts. He owns your life. He owns your timetable.
That miracle was time-sensitive. Mary and Martha said, "If you would have been here, Lord, my brother wouldn't have died." They felt like it was time. But when they sent word, they said, "Come, the one you love is sick." There are times where we have preferences and desires as it relates to the timetable that God does a thing.
There are some things God's going to do when culture would assume it's too late. What's the song say? "Sooner or later." We've seen the later. But we want the sooner. I'm telling somebody, it might happen later. And God's going to get glory out of the later.
When you say yes to God, you got to be willing to be used as a teaching tool. God used Lazarus for somebody else. So God said, "Hey, I'm going to let you go in the tomb for somebody else to see you come out."
And then it is the revelation—this progressive revelation of God. Mary, we know that Jesus spent time every time he came through Bethany. So there was intimate knowledge. They knew him. But even after all that time they spent with Jesus, Jesus still had to reveal himself in a deeper way to them.
She said, "If you would have been here," and Jesus said, "It doesn't matter. When I get here is the right time." So I've got to give you a deeper revelation of who I am. It's a progressive revelation. You can't get stuck on the revelation of who you thought Jesus was. You got to be open to who Jesus can be.
She had a revelation that he could perform resurrections. But then he gave her a revelation. He was one—the resurrection itself. Jesus said:
"I am the resurrection and the life."
Resurrection isn't restricted to a certain time frame. Whenever he shows up, he's the resurrection. It's your time. Whenever he shows up, it's your time.
When we use the word therapeutic God, we don't mean that God isn't therapeutic. That's actually an aspect of God. God can be therapeutic. He's a balm in Gilead. There's a healing of the soul. When we say therapeutic God, we're not diminishing the therapeutic nature of God's ministry.
What we are pointing out is how some people feel like God's primary mission should be to cater to their feelings. God's obsession is not your feelings. God's obsession is your faith. It's your formation. It's your focus. It is not your feelings.
Many of us who say we love Jesus so much are not emotionally mature enough to have handled the intimate relationship that the disciples had with Jesus in bodily form. When Jesus said, "Get thee behind me, Satan," whoever he said that to left. They were gone.
Jesus said in Matthew 17, "You unbelieving and perverse generation. How long shall I stay with you? How long do I have to put up with you?" The priority isn't the feelings. The priority is the formation.
When people have this therapeutic God, our feelings become the primary measuring tool of his faithfulness. So if he's hurting our feelings, then he's seen as unfaithful. Every difficult season doesn't just hurt you emotionally; it destabilizes you spiritually.
A God you were handed wasn't a God that's big enough to be trusted in dark times. He's only safe when he makes sense. So that God is an unsafe God. And that's the God we were given. Most people don't get this god in church. They get this god from culture.
There's another god we've been given: the tribal god. This is the God where we don't belong to him—he belongs to us. This is the God who belongs to your group. This is the God who is reduced to your preferences. He's agitated by your agitations. He is affiliated with who you are affiliated with, and he is in opposition to who you are in opposition to.
This God is not the God of all creation. This is the God of your corner, and anybody outside your corner is not in good graces with this God.
The problem with this picture of God is that the God of scripture is on his own side. He's not on your side. He's not on my side. He's on his side.
In Joshua, an angel appears as Joshua's preparing to engage in battle. Joshua asks, "Are you for us?" And the angel says:
"Neither. I am the captain of the army of the Lord of Hosts."
He literally says, "I'm not on your side. I'm on God's side. The only reason I'm here fighting for you is because you happen to be on the right side in this situation."
"I'm not always on your side. I'm on your side when you're right. On this issue, I'm on this side, but on this issue, you're on the wrong side. They were wrong, and you were wrong, so I'm on your side here, but I'm on that side because I'm on my side."
The tribal God is contained by a single culture, a single political party, a single ethnicity, a single nationality. When the people of God in the Old Testament tried to reduce him to a tribal deity—a God who existed primarily to defeat their enemies and validate their interests—the prophets would show up and correct him.
Amos told Israel that God was just as concerned with the nations surrounding them as he was with them.
Most people read Jonah's story and stop after chapter two—after he spits out the fish. That's why Jonah was mad. Because God had love for the Ninevites. That's why he didn't want to go. He didn't want them to repent because he's like, "I can't believe you love my enemy."
Do your research on what the Assyrians, whose capital was Nineveh, used to do to the Israelites. You'll understand why Jonah didn't want to go. When Jonah preached, people actually listened, and they repented, and he got mad. He got under a tree and said, "I want to die."
Jonah is a case study on how great spiritual gifting in no way is an indication of deep spiritual formation. He's so unstable. He wants to die because they repented and God wouldn't let them die.
But look at Ruth. What kind of woman was Ruth? A Moabitete. The history and roots of Moab—people would have been dragging Boaz online. "Out of all the women you can get, you got her. A Moabitete woman." He literally becomes a kinsman redeemer. And then here comes Jesus, touching lepers.
Do you remember the Roman centurion who had a servant that's sick? Jesus said, "Okay, give me the location. We'll come to the house." The centurion says, "You don't even have to come to the house. Just send the word. I'm a man under authority. I understand the way authority works. I speak and people obey. So you just speak."
It's a Roman centurion—a military leader overseeing at least 100 Roman soldiers. But who was actually oppressing Israel? Romans. Roman occupation. They were subjugated in the Roman Empire. So Jesus working a miracle for the Roman centurion is him working a miracle for the oppressor.
This says a lot about discernment and Jesus's ability to recognize the difference between somebody who worked for a system and who they actually were as a person. That's a big difference. To assume everybody is that way is to judge.
But even Jesus models for us that God even had love for a man who loved a servant enough to go to Jesus on his behalf. That Roman centurion could have gotten another one. But he went to Jesus, and Jesus is like, "Oh, this man is different."
There's the taskmaster god. This is the God who wants your work but not your relationship. He's the God of endless demand. He's personified and typified in the imagery of Pharaoh, your taskmaster.
Pharaoh is a picture of a theological distortion that many people have of God. Pharaoh never reduced the quota. He only increased the quota. Israel had to make more bricks without straw. Do more with less.
The invitation of Jesus is so different. He looks at a group of religiously exhausted people in Matthew. They're crushed under the weight of an impossible religious expectation, and he didn't hand them a new assignment. He said, "Come to me."
The taskmaster God produces people who know how to work for God but have never learned how to rest in him. They're good servants. They don't know how to be a son.
Many people don't know how to feel accepted and approved by God without being exhausted for God. They don't know that he is just as pleased with their worship. The work comes because I love him. The work comes because he loves me. I don't work to get him to love me.
Jesus said to Peter:
"Do you love me?"
Peter said, "Yes."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep."
Feed my sheep because you love me. It's an expression of love.
Finally, there's the temperamental God. This view of God sees his love as a feeling that fluctuates. The problem with this is it directly contradicts one of the most fundamental truths about God.
The writer of Hebrews uses the word immutability. Immutable means he doesn't change. He doesn't switch. He's not subject to mood. So the temperamental God is not a god of scripture. This is a projection of our own trauma.
It's what happens when the unpredictability of human authority figures gets transferred onto God. A parent whose mood shifts, a spiritual leader who's warm in public to the saints but cold in private to the staff—that unpredictability you experienced in people gets projected upon God.
Now you feel like God feels about you based on how you're doing. You missed it. Now you're feeling like God is mad at you.
The Bible uses anthropomorphic terms to describe different aspects of God in terms of his dealings with his people. It uses emotional language to describe a God who has made a conscious decision to feel. We're not saying that God doesn't have pleasure or displeasure. Of course, he has displeasure. We operate dysfunctionally. Any good parent would have displeasure.
Even God's wrath is an expression of God's love. Love hates what hurts what it loves. So even wrath, the wrath of God is an expression of God's love.
But his love is not temperamental. His feelings about my behavior should not be confused with the reality of his love. I am deeply, consistently, securely loved, and he is regularly, anxiously awaiting me to recognize and rest in that love.
It is only then that I can do what the writer of Hebrews encourages us to do: come boldly before the throne of grace. I am loved.
Even in Genesis, we see the fullness of God's love. Adam and Eve were hiding because they thought God was mad. But God went looking for them. Not because he was mad at them, but because his love made him a chaser. His love made him come looking for them to restore them.
When you think you've got a temperamental God, we try to run from God. But God comes running after us. In the parable of the prodigal son, the father starts running. He didn't let the son get to him. Because he loved his son, he ran to him.
Sometimes we're running from God when God is running to us. He's chasing us, not to punish us. We're running from him. We're running to hide, and he's chasing to fix.
You think he's coming to spank you. But the spanking is inherent in your choice. The consequence is inherent in your choice. Sin violates God's design. So inherent in sin is the consequence. When you stick your hand in fire, the consequence is inherent in the disobedience.
He says, "You think I'm running to spank you. The consequence is already there. I'm running to fix you. I'm running to help you. I'm running to restore you."
This is the only long-term motivator for holiness: love. By my loving kindness have I drawn.
Some people say, "I don't want to just hear about the goodness of God. I want to hear about the holiness of God." But the framing of that language creates a dichotomy that doesn't exist biblically. You can't separate the two. They aren't polar opposites.
His holiness is what makes him good. He is pure, incapable of evil, the ultimate expression and embodiment of that which is safe and can be trusted. His holiness is what makes him good.
When Israel wanted a king in the Old Testament, God said, "You don't want one. You think you want one. You don't. You need to let me lead you because I'm not going to use you." He said, "You get a king, he's going to tax you. He's going to draft your sons and send them to war. He's going to break up your families."
There's an assumption that punishment is the best motivator for people's change and transformation. But it is the goodness of God that leads me to repentance. Consequence only produces temporary change because the consequence is only a motivator as long as you remember what it felt like.
It becomes about the avoidance of pain, but eventually you move to the pursuit of something higher and greater. Which is why we say: the King's way isn't just right. It's better. Pursue this way because it's better. Love your enemies because it's better.
I don't want to love my enemies because I think God's going to zap me.
There are some things you've done that you didn't deserve mercy for. Mercy interrupts the law of sowing and reaping. It doesn't remove the law, but it interrupts. It means that what you could harvest, you don't. It doesn't mean you don't harvest anything, but it means that what you could harvest, you don't.
Let's be honest. There are people that have done things that are less than what we did, and it came out completely worse for them because God's like, "You don't know when the reign of mercy is going to show up. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy."
You and I are both married. We don't want our wives to leave us. But if that's the only motivation for loving a wife as Christ loved the church, good luck with that. I'm not happy with that. Like, am I going to be like, "You know, let me do this so you don't leave"? "Do you like me? I don't want you to leave. So let me cook. I don't want you to leave. So let me hug you." At some point you'd be like, "Well, listen, this is a lot."
Our hope and prayer through this message is that you begin to ask yourself: "What god were you given?" Make sure that as you pursue this list, the god you're actually given is a god of love, who's not a tyrant. He's not a taskmaster. He's not temperamental.
His ministry can be therapeutic in nature, but he's not therapeutic in the sense that he caters to your feelings. He is holy. Yes, he is righteous. He is consistent and he is faithful. Our prayer for us and for you is that our eyes will be open to that reality.
