The Path to Oneness with God

The beginning of the Bible is a wonderful story of God's provision for people in providing the Garden of Eden where they could live in close relationship and connection to each other. And then a tragedy occurred. There was an eruption. There was a violent break of a relationship between God and His people. I'm sure all of you at some time in your life have experienced this powerful force that comes whenever someone who's really been close to you and you cared about and you loved them and suddenly they betray you. Really difficult to trust them again. It's really difficult to restore that relationship between you and them. The story in the Scripture is a story about how God set about to do this. How can I bring these people who have rejected me, who have refused to do what I told them even though I made them, when I'd given them everything that they have, how can I trust them again? What is the relationship I can have? The story of the Bible is about how God's work to bring about atonement. I don't want to use that word too much. It means to be together in one. How can we be together with someone we betrayed? That's the story of the Scripture. God tried a lot of things. He sat down and said, okay, here's the rules by which I want you to live, the Ten Commandments and all of the laws that we find in the early part of the Old Testament. If you will do this, you and I will be right together. None of that worked. The people rebelled against God consistently and constantly. God set us a way by which they could change that. He said, if you'll bring an animal, the best one you have, the most valued animal you have and you put it on the altar and you kill it and you take the blood of that animal, you put your hand on the animal as it's killed and you say, as this animal is given to you, so I give myself to you in surrender and submission, then I will forgive you and the two of us will be like one together. God was trying his very best to find a way by which we could come back to him and discover the oneness that we had lost and not been able to restore. Then he sent his son Jesus to say, I want you to see what it's like when a human being lives completely obedient to me. Jesus said, I say the things that the Father wants me to say and I do the things the Father wants me to say and he never failed. So here is our example of someone who lives with this one connection to God, close to him all the time. And then Jesus died, a sacrifice for us that our sins could be forgiven because of his sacrifice in our place. The text that I want to use today, it's at the very end of the Bible. Those of you in the small groups in our Sunday morning time have been studying all these things that God has done to restore the relationship between ourselves as human beings and him. This last chapter of the Bible, it talks about the end result of God's great effort to bring oneness or unity between himself and us. What his plan is, is to create again a place where there could be the kind of oneness that he had with Adam and Eve before they rebelled against him. But this would go on forever, a place where all the people who wanted to be at one with God could find that oneness and live there without any fear of ever finding rebellion and a break between our relationship with God. In this passage, he describes the end result of all the work that he's done and what it's going to take for us to be able to live in that relationship with God in oneness all the time. He starts this passage, chapter 22 of the book of Revelation, verse 12. He says, behold, I'm coming soon. My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are all those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, everyone who loves and practices falsehood. I, Jesus, send my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star. The Spirit and the bride say come, and let him who hears say come. Whoever is thirsty, let him come, and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life. What Jesus is describing is what's going to happen to the whole world when they come to stand before him. There is a place where the people who are at one with him will live with him forever. Sometimes it's called heaven, sometimes the city of Jerusalem. All of these are simply words that God has used to describe the circumstances and place where people will live as a result of finding and discovering the oneness that God wants to have with all of us. He begins by talking about himself. He says, I am the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. All of those are words that simply describe the reality. God made the world. He's been here all the way through it, and at one time he's going to enter, he's going to end this culture as we know it. All the things that we see in the world now will end, and a new, different kind of world will begin. I started all of this. I've been here through all of it. I'm at the end. Alpha and omega is like us saying from A to Z. You want to say you know something, you say I know cars from A to Z. It means from the beginning to the end, and he uses those words, from the beginning to the end. I'm the first. John tells us he was there at creation. He's going to be there at the judgment. I'm the first and the last. I have everything in this world under my control. Now when you see the world out of control, it means that God is simply not exercising his power to control it. So you can do whatever you want to do. God will let you. But it doesn't mean that things are out of his control. The moment he wanted to, he could take your life. He's simply saying, I want you to understand I have all the power and authority, and whenever you come to stand before me, you're going to stand before someone who knows it all, who's seen it all, and who has it in his hand. So be prepared for that. Then he says about that, behold, I'm coming soon. The word soon can mean quick or it can mean it's going to happen right now. I think the King James Version has quick here, and I think that's a better way to say it. What he's talking about is my coming will be quick so that you won't know that it's going to be coming. It's going to happen fast and you'll be unprepared because there is no warning. I'm telling you that the time of the end of the world comes and it will be just like that. No time to prepare, no time to get ready, for whatever you've done before then is finished. So I'm coming quickly. My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he's done. So when he comes, he comes with the rewards for those who've lived in this world, either the judgment and punishment that's going to come or the rewards he's promised to the people who are now at one with him. And then he says something that sort of is misused and misunderstood by a lot of people. He said, I'm going to give everyone according to what he has done. That sounds on the surface like, okay, if I've done 5,000 good things and 2,000 bad things then he's going to give me good rewards. The Bible is very, very clear with regard to this. There is no way that you can earn a right to go to heaven. There's no way that you can earn the right to enter the city of God. Works, human works, are not sufficient for this. There is no way you can pay for what you've done. If someone offends you, really does something that hurts you, it's hard for them to do things that are making that right. There has to be on your side the ability to say, I forgive you. What God is saying is no one can earn that right. No one can make that change on their own. Instead, he's made a way for it. The Old Testament, the sacrifices were to be given as a way of saying, I give the most valuable thing I have and if I could give myself on the altar to be burned up, I would do it because I'm giving you my life. I want you to forgive me. When Jesus came, he gave himself for us. And he said, if you will trust me, my own life and the sacrifice of my life is given in your behalf. And your offense about God will be changed. For whenever he looks at you and sees your sinful life, I will say to him, this person has given themselves to me and accepted me as the Lord of their life and I have died for them. Would you forgive them? And God will and does. Now what is he talking about the rewards then? Well, if you say, Jesus Christ is my Lord, and a young child can say that, a little child up here, Jesus is God's son, you can learn to say Jesus is the Lord. It means the ruler of your life. It means the one who controls and directs you. And when you say that that's true and you live your life trying to live in obedience to what God wants for you, the rewards of life are given to you. You don't earn salvation, but what you earn, what you have, is the result of your obedience to God. God honors that. He's made sure to let us know that the things we do for him, he will accept them and he will value them. And he will make sure that the rewards come to us as his servants. It's not that you earn salvation by your good deeds, but when you give your life to Christ and you begin living in obedience to him, making your choices based on what he says is right, rejecting what he says is wrong, doing what he tells you you should do, he rewards you for that. We don't know what the rewards are going to be when God gives them to us, but he doesn't give bad things to his people as rewards. So he says, at the time that it comes, those of you who have been faithful to me who will enter the city will receive the things I have prepared for you. He says, I go to prepare a place for you, so he's going to have some place for us. And with that are the rewards that come from a life of faithful service to him. It doesn't get us into heaven, but it provides the result of a life of service, the rewards that come to that life. So Jesus is saying, the city gates are there, the rewards will be available for the people who belong to me, and in those days you will be able to get in. But let me tell you the kind of people who will be able to get in and the difference between those who are in and those who are out. Blessed be those, blessed are those whose robes, who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Two things that come to those who go in, they will be able to enter and they will have access to eternal life, life endless and life as God himself lives it. That's the reward that he's talking about that's going to come to us. It's for those who have washed their robes white. That phrase refers to the present tense, continually doing it. You don't simply wash your clothes one time in your lifetime. Every time they're dirty, you wash them. So your life, you don't say, okay God, forgive me of my sins and be accepted into his family and then forget it. Every time you fail to live in obedience to the way God wants you, your life is again sustained. And you have to go back to Christ and say, I failed you, I have done something that offends you, I acknowledge that, I ask for your forgiveness, and then the blood of Christ pays for that sin and we're forgiven. So the process of washing our lives with the blood is persistent, it's continual. What's reflected here is the story that was found in the Old Testament, where the people would go in to take their offering, their sacrifice to the temple, the animal would be killed as a sacrifice for their sin, the blood would be taken and it would be sprinkled on the altar. There were even times in the nation's history when the people would make a vow to God and they would walk past and they would take the blood of the animal sacrifices and fling it out on the whole congregation. The blood stained their clothes, physically, but the blood was representative of the fact that God accepted their sacrifice to him and he forgave them, they were his children. So the blood in the Bible, even though physically it stains clothes, represents the spiritual cleansing of a person who has sacrificed their life to God. So the person who continually is sacrificing their life to God, remember Jesus said, if you want to come after me you must deny yourself, is continually denying himself to be obedient to God. You heard stories of people who gave up their week for Bible school, came every night, worked all day, worked here at night, went home, got up the next day, worked all day, did that all week long, denied themselves what they wanted to do, they didn't do. What God asked them to do, they did. Deny yourself, take up your cross, continue to do what I tell you, regardless of what it costs you, and imitate me. That's what the cleansing blood of Christ does. It provides us forgiveness when we fail to do those things. Now whenever you've lived your life in obedience to me, you're washing your life in the blood of Christ. So you're presenting yourself as a person forgiven, obedient, committed, and dedicated. And then he said the tree of life is available to you, eternal life, and you'll be able to live in the place where I have saved for those who want to be at one with me forever. The city represents what we call heaven, and those who are outside in the lake of fire, it describes in other places, are described here too. Outside are the dogs. Now the Bible has a different view of dogs than most people in our culture. Most people in our culture who have a dog think of it as their children, or sometimes as their spouse, or sometimes as their best friend. It's always a wonderful thing to have a dog for them. The Bible saw dogs in a very, very different way. People didn't have pets in their house in those days. They may have an animal that they would use for some purpose. The dogs were generally like wild animals. They ran around and ate whatever they wanted. They got into whatever they wanted to get into. They fought with each other. They bit people that tried to mess with them or fool with them. And they were considered animals that were controlled by their own desire to do whatever they wanted to do, wherever they wanted to do it, whenever they wanted to do it. Immoral, wild, and untamed. When people are called dogs in the Bible, they're people who have ignored the authority of God. They don't have an owner or a boss. They do whatever they want to do, when they want to do it, the way they want to do it, and they don't care what anybody thinks. Those are the dogs. People who live their lives saying, I don't care what the Bible says, I don't care what God says, I don't care what anybody thinks, I'm going to live my life the way I want to. That's like a dog in the Bible. And all those people will be outside of the city of God, what the Bible calls the lake of fire. Those who are dogs, controlled by their human nature, controlled by their passions and their desires, will never make it into the city. Those who practice magic arts, sorcerers. The reason the sorcerers are enemies of God is because they claim to do what only God can do. Who can tell what's going to happen tomorrow? Only God knows what he's going to do. Who can predict what's going to take place in the future? Only God can do that. So when someone tells you they can tell you what your life is going to be by reading the palm of your hand, or tea leaves, or looking at cards, or whatever it is, they're saying to you, I can do what only God can really do. And when someone does that, they're saying I'm equal and superior to God. And when someone says they refuse to accept the supreme authority of God, they become an enemy of God. And so they can never enter the place where God is prepared for the people who belong to him. And those who are sexually immoral, who refuse to live the way God says they should live, our desires and passions are important in our lives. They're given to us for particular reasons. But they're given to us to be used within the context that God has provided for us. There's nothing wrong with a person desiring to have a sexual mate, whether it's a man wants a woman, or a woman wants a man for a sexual partner, or even somebody that has tendencies to have homosexual behavior. It's using those within the context of what God says is correct. You are not to do those things. So even though you may have desires to do them, the behavior is given clearly and plainly within the context of marriage, or never, if it's the homosexual tendencies that you have. It's not the desire, it's the action that offends God. So people who refuse to live by these boundaries will never enter the city of God. Because they say to themselves, my desires take precedence over the rules of God. And whenever you do that, you can never live within the society in which God has his own rules by which we must live. The reason a murderer is an enemy of God is because all human life belongs to God. And when you take something that belongs to another person, it violates that person. Someone comes to your house and steals your jewelry, you say that's no friend of mine. Someone who takes a life has taken something God has given and belongs to him, and you become no friend of God. Whenever a person violates those things that God says are correct and right, they become his enemies. Idolaters, he says. Idolaters, we kind of brush aside because we think of someone that has in their house a little statue on the shelf and they bow down to it every day and pray to it. But idolatry is really allowing anything in this world to control your behavior other than God. For example, if you have a job and you know what God wants you to do, and you say, well, I can't do it because my job won't allow me to do what God wants me to do. You said, I trust my job to control my life more than what God tells me I should do. Jesus confronted people who said, I can't follow you because of my career. He said, give up your career. I can't follow you because I've got family to take care of. He said, forget your family. When you make choices in your life that are contrary to what God says he wants you to do, whatever causes you to make that choice is your Lord and your ruler. And it's an offense to God who is in charge of this world. So when you start out living your life and you just do the things you think are right without consulting God or reading what he has to say, you've made yourself an enemy of the one who made this world and rules it. And you can expect that he will not bless you, nor will he respond to your calls for his help. For you have now said, I am God. And he says, okay, see how you can work that out. You're on your own. He ends it by saying the people outside will be people who love and practice falsehoods. And when John uses the word falsehood here in his writings, what he usually refers to are people who have made a statement about something that they don't keep. And it's usually a reference to people who have made a profession of their trust in Christ, but they don't live the life of submission to him. They could be a person who does all or one of these other things he's already mentioned. For example, they could be a murderer and say, I've given my life to Christ. They could be an immoral person and say, I've given my life to Christ. And they go on in their immorality. They go on in their murderous ways. But you see, because they say they've given their life to Christ and they live contrary to that, he calls them liars or people who love falsehood. I love for people to think of me this way, but I want to do something different than that. I think on the last days, Jesus indicated to us that there would be many who would come before him and hear him say, I don't know who you are. And they would say, oh yeah, you know me because I taught Sunday school for years. I don't know you. What he meant was there are people who do a lot of good things, even church work, preachers, church leaders, who say that they belong to God, but in their own minds and hearts are living exactly the way they want to. What God looks at is not what we say, but what our lifestyle shows. Does my life show that when faced with choices, I always choose to be obedient to God? Or does it show that I'm obedient to God only when I want to? Only when I see that it's going to benefit me in some way? See the relationship between God and his people is a relationship of superior authority. We say, you are my Lord, I give my life to you. And then we live the lifestyle of continual dependence on him. When someone says, I give my life to you, and they want to get into heaven, but they also want to do exactly what they want to do, he sees this as a lover of lies. They love the lies because they want to appear one way, and they want to love to do the things that they're not supposed to do. So they love their lies because it allows them to think that they're living in God's approval in the eyes of everyone else, when in reality they aren't. But God is not fooled at all. He knows our hearts. And when you do something good to try to get favor from God, he knows you're playing a con game with him. He's never, ever deceived. Those who have made their professions of trust in God, but don't live that, will never see the inside of the city of God. John ends this passage by talking about what God gives us to do. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. It's what he tells us. I am the root and the offspring of David. I fulfill the prophecies found in the scripture. I am the bright and morning star. When the morning star comes up, it means soon the day is going to start, the sun is going to come up. I am the one who tells you that the last days are here. I am the one who alerts you. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit and the bride say, come. My Holy Spirit and the church says to you, come into the kingdom of God. Let him who hears say, come. Whoever is thirsty, let him come. Whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life. Jesus ends this by talking about the message. The Holy Spirit says, now I want you to come. How does he do that? When you're living your life, doing whatever you want to do, and all of a sudden you become aware, you should say, God, I know you want me to live life the way you tell me. I realize I'm not. Today I've heard you. I come to you in surrender and submission of myself to you. The Holy Spirit says that and the church says it. It means we preach it and we teach it. But some of you are here today, you're listening to every word. Some of you are ignoring every word, but God is speaking. And whenever in your mind you hear God say, this is what you need to do, you notice this is true. The Holy Spirit is saying it and the church is saying it. Now for those of you who have heard it, you are to say to the world around you, come. You have a task, tomorrow night, to go to the community and to say, come. You've experienced this great power of God and now you come to share it. So those who have heard say, come. Whoever is thirsty, let him come. The thirst comes from God giving you a desire for what he wants. So if that thirst is in you, recognize that God's Spirit has created it. If you thought suddenly as I've been talking, you know I need to really commit my life to Christ, that's the Spirit of God creating a thirst inside of you for him. So whoever is thirsty, let him come. And whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life. God offers you life in this world and life forever. All he wants is for you to say, I want that. I will give you my life. I pledge to live in obedience to you the rest of my life. And you will be sure when the day comes, the city of God will be open to you. Would you bow your heads please for a moment? I want to ask you, if you know for sure when you come to that last day and God looks at you, that he'll say, welcome home. If you're not sure about that, that's the most important thing you can ever, ever do, is to make sure that you know. You can make sure that you know by simply saying to God, I really want what you have. Not simply to go to heaven, but to live my life knowing you are guiding me. You are providing for me. You're protecting me. You're going to make my life valuable and important. And I know that I can only have that when I say to you, take my life. Tell me how to live. Show me what to do. And I will do that whatever the cost. And what you will find in your life is the blood of Christ cleansing you of all guilt, shame and sin. And giving you confidence to face life and eternity. Now you can do that simply by saying to God, I have not lived with you controlling my life. I apologize to you today for that. And I ask you to take my life. Show me how to live. And I will do whatever you ask. Maybe you've started on that journey and your robe has gotten a little dirty by your behavior. Here's your choice. Either you get concerned about that and ask God to cleanse you, forgive you of your sin and let you continue this journey he started you on, or you get stopped right there. You have control over that. Wash your robe. Ask for his forgiveness. Pledge to him to live in a way that you never have before in obedience to him. Maybe God wants you to become a part of this church. Church has a great mission to make sure we tell this story to the world. We need all the help we can get. Whatever it is, you know, God's already told you what to do. We sing an invitation to him this morning to allow you to say to God the things you need to say. You may want to come and say, this is a promise I make to God. Share it with me. Share it with Marla. We'll pray with you. This is the time God says, come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Would you stand please? You have told us plainly and clearly that one day we will stand in front of you at the gate to heaven and we will hear you say there is no place for you here or welcome home. Thank you for warning us. You know it's hard to believe those things. You know it's hard to believe the things like that when we look at the world around us and to take it lightly. So we ask that you would impress on us the reality of what's true so that even our own minds that are skeptical and our hearts that are cold would be awakened to this reality before it's too late. We ask as we live this week that we would keep the promises we've made to you today. That every day we would wash our spiritual clothes making sure that the stains that are there from our rebellion and sin are forgiven by the price that you've paid for us on the cross. Dismiss us in a world that needs you to say to the world come. The water of life is available. In the name of Christ we ask for this courage. Amen. The love of God is broader than our vast expanse. His deeper and wider than the sea. Love reaches out to all to bring a bond in life. For God so loved the world his only son he gave. Share his love by telling what the Lord has done for you. Share his love by sharing of your faith.