Bob Allen

Week Two – Returning to God

Behold Your God

The Adult Sunday School class has begun a new series that is based on DVD’s and the name of the series will be at the head of every lesson.  It is not easy to transcribe an entire lesson, but I’ll attempt to take notes and let you know the primary topics and main points in every message.  From there, you will have to fill in the blanks.

It will generally take two weeks to cover each DVD since there is the message, which is about 45 minutes, and there is a practical application, which will be covered the following week.  I will make notes of some of the more memorial quotes and if this sounds interesting to you, you might do some research and find the series online.  The primary instructor is John Snyder.  This is an attempt to summarize the DVD.

Week Two – Returning to God

               The opening section focuses on the life of Timothy Dwight.  In the late 1700’s, the nation was at a critical stage of its development.  Because of the influence of France during the revolutionary war, two views had crept into the American Society.  1) An Anti-monarchy view of life that didn’t want anyone to dictate from above how someone should live.  2) A drift towards atheism.  In 1795, Dwight became the president of Yale and later the Professor of Theology.  He preached 173 sermons on the Majesty of God with an emphasis on the Character of God.  “Sin is always the rooted in our ignorance” was the primary message and he made an effort to confront the University of Yale about the character of God.  Over 1/3 of the student body of Yale was converted to life changing Christianity and more than 30 students dedicated their lives to the service of God.  Even the non-Christians were changed and the desire to mock God was diminished.  Rethinking who God is was at the heart of all the change.

 

Lecture: He begins with some biblical passages about God.

  1. Daniel 4:34-35 – But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my [b]reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever;  “For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom endures from generation to generation. “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven, And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’
  2. Psalm 113:5-6 – Who is like the Lord our God, Who is enthroned on high, Who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth?
  3. Psalm 5:4-5 – For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You. The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity.
  4. Nahum 1:2 – A jealous and avenging God is the Lord; The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies.

Is this the God you know?  Is this your Christianity?

Verses about the life lived with God:

  1. John 10:10 – The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
  2. I Peter 1:7-8 – to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
  3. Colossians 1:9-11 – For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience;

 

There has been a drift in our lives away from a biblical view of God and after spending too much time in this drift, we have begun to believe that this is normal Christianity.  We get used to a lessor Christian life.  People say you need to accept this lessor view, but there is a huge gap between what we live and what we read in the Bible.  We also continue to clutter the path to return to a biblical view of God with objects that restrict us from taking that path towards the return of a biblical view.  Many have come to the point where they are not sure if we can return to God.  We want to walk in that faithful life, but we have begun to believe that it might not be possible.  There are three truths that must be grasped if we are to return.  And in order to properly evaluate our lives, we must be able to be critical of our lives and where we are today.

  1. A correct diagnosis is crucial to returning to God. The wrong diagnosis will always lead us to the wrong solution.  Take the examples of both psychical and spiritual illness.  What is the primary problem?  If we look at some of the things that have some through the church in the past 10 years, we see that there have been several ‘fads’ that have passed through the church.  After 10 years, are we really a more purposed centered church?  After 10 years, have we seen the church fundamentally change?  Are we truly living the solution? It is easy to waste years because of the wrong diagnosis.  The wrong diagnosis can kill even if the medicine is good and is meant to heal the illness.  A spiritual misdiagnosis can and has damaged the church severely. The true solution is that our churches have embraced a non-biblical idea of who God is.  Our words are weightless because our non-biblical view of God is weightless.  In Psalms 50, God lists the sins of the nation and then hits upon something critical, their view of Him. “These things you have done and I kept silence; You thought that I was just like you; I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes.   We are not called to fix the world, but we can fix our errant view of who God is.
  2. We must understand there is an order and connection in Biblical Truth. There are four things to understand that they build on each other.  If we begin to understand these very important points, things begin to fall into place.
    1. What a person believes about God impacts
    2. What a person believes about self which impacts
    3. What a person believes about sin which impacts
    4. What a person believes about Salvation. A small view of God produces a large view of self.  Sin is more than something that takes us where we don’t want to go.  Sin is a thief of God’s glory.  Glory that God deserves.  The problem with our churches today is that with such a small view of God, no matter what we teach, people think that things are just fine with living in (whatever) sin.  If we begin on the wrong path, we will end up at the wrong destination.  Something any one knows but we haven’t put into practice.
  3. Root Sins must be distinguished from Fruit Sins. Both repulse God but Root Sins are the ones that are hidden, broader sins that we all wrestle with individually.  Fruit Sins are the more obvious and often the uglier and the more embarrassing. The Root Sins are pride, unbelief, and selfishness.  But know that no root sin will survive in a life that is pursuing an ever clearer view of God.   Until we are willing to repent of the our root sins, we will never resolve the fruit sins in our lives.

 

Can we afford more and more years and the cost of:

  1. A misdiagnosis of the problem?
  2. A misdiagnosis of our understanding?
  3. A misdiagnosis of the solution where we attempt to kill the fruit but not the root of the problem?

We must have the courage and discipline to discipline our lives to examine our lives correctly and to deal with what we find.