Intimacy With God

The title of my sermon today is Intimacy with God. Intimacy with God. I had a wedding to perform two weeks ago tomorrow. I performed a wedding in Washington state, and of two individuals who loved each other dearly, doing things the right way. It's always an honor and a pleasure to be involved in something like that. For me, I won this sermon because it leads into tomorrow's message. Also, but in the marriage of two people, there is an intimacy that doesn't exist anywhere else. Even though people may live together in this world, there is still the difference between being married and living together as husband and wife. The marriage ceremony, the marriage idea, the marriage platform was put together by God. It's an ordained institution, as I typically say. I want to look at it because I want to ask you the question. What intimacy with God? Are we at that stage with God yet? Are you? You feel, for those who have been married or are married or will be married, I don't know if you know yet, are you prepared for that? I was just talking with someone earlier today that is contemplating marriage down the road. They want to get marriage, pre-marriage counseling to see if they're ready.

The ceremony of marriage is actually a picture of what God had ordained from the foundations of the world. Said his son, the word was slain from the foundations of the world, which means God's plan existed over 14 billion years ago. This plan includes the church marrying Christ. That is what we represent, not only individually, but as a whole, as a church of God. So, as I prepared for marriage, I think I was 26, 25 or 26, somewhere in there, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I didn't. Nobody could know even though you can have marriage counseling. I remember our marriage counseling consisted of listening to a minister who drove on and on for three hours. Never ask us hardly anything about ourselves. So, if you're about to get married, you don't have to worry. I don't do it that way. But nothing can prepare you for the intimacy that is involved in a marriage. Matter of fact, I like to have David Will, and that's why I can't really go back at David. He puts my power points together, and he could make me look like an absolute fool. So, I can never come back at him. He always has the last word. But in Philippians 3 and verse 10, amplified version, because we have to figure, are we there yet? And I find that amplified version very interesting, and I'm not going to get technical on you. But it says, and this, so that I may know him. Do you know him? Wait a minute. You're supposed to get married, right? There's a marriage. Sufferer is going to take place. If you don't believe me, turn to Revelation 19 and read it. That they know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings by being continually conformed to his death. That you may know him, as the new King James says. That you may know him. Do we really know Christ? We're supposed to act like Christ. We're supposed to look like Christ. We're supposed to conduct our lives like Christ. Do we? And if we do, do we look at each other and say, well, that's a Christ-like person? Or do we look at each other and go, because there's something going on here that God is working at. As the new King James said, that I may know him. Do we know Christ up close and personal? How do you know him without this? How do you know him without knowing the word? Without seeing how he walked on earth like we do now for three and a half years? How do we do that? As a matter of fact, go with me to Genesis. Genesis 2. Verse 25, as he's talking about the marriage. Genesis 2 and verse 25, where he's from the new King James Version. And they were both naked, Adam and Eve. They were both naked, the man and a wife, and they were not, what? Ashamed. They didn't look at it as some odd thing. The physical example of the spiritual idea of God, always a spiritual goal. Personal intimacy and personal intimate love cast out fear, embarrassment, awkwardness, maybe you aren't nervous on your wedding night, maybe you weren't nervous the honeymoon, maybe that never entered your mind. But marrying and being prepared for the wedding supper with God, I think we need to be a little nervous. I think we need to be a little prepared to see if we're even going to be there. Have we qualified? Because the groom makes a decision whether you're going to be there or not. The father will set the time.

So that intimacy with God, because Jesus Christ is God, and he's defined by God, the word, what does that really mean to you? You may say, where in the world are you going? Well, I thought about this after the wedding I performed two weeks ago, and it made me realize that intimacy with God is not the destination. Anymore than being at one is complete on the wedding night. The consummation of the wedding, that isn't the destination. It is the journey and not the destination. Now, you may say, where is that coming from? But I say that it's about the journey and not the destination because it pictures our life just like eternal life, right? I mean, otherwise, if it was the other way, otherwise, we would be better off, if it's just about the destination, we would be better off as soon as we are baptized, have hands laid upon us, receive the Holy Spirit. God just kills us right then and there, right? If it is about the destination, let's just, God ended it right there and we're in His kingdom. Why doesn't He do it? Wouldn't it be more efficient that way? Here's a lot less things to worry about. His angels go, well, do you want? No, that's taken care of. Well, do you want me to check? No, they're taken care of. So, we learn from that, that we are on the journey now. The marriage, because we are engaged, you said that. You said that at baptism. Did you mean it? Are you getting to know Christ and God at such a level, because it's a spiritual level? We can just view things sometimes physically, but our level of intimacy with them is spiritual. How we worship God, it isn't just showing up. In Christ told the woman at the well, what shall worship Him in spirit and truth? It's what tomorrow is all about as we look at that. So, go back to the words in Philippians 3 and verse 10. Philippians 3 verse 10 and the Amplified, because it's not just about the journey and its destination. But I'd like you to look at this words, because it's also mentioned in another place. Continually transformed. Continually transformed.

Are you there? Are you there yet? Are you being transformed? Because those are two big words. Continually transformed. Are you? Are you just the same old Joe you were last year? Did you just take Passover and go, got my feet cleaned, took my bread, had my wine. I'm the same old Joe.

Question is, if you were, will you be the same old Joe next year? Because that's not the bride Christ is looking for. Continually transformed means we're trying to be transformed to what? Perfection. Spiritual. Spiritually. We can do it. Otherwise, God would not have said, become you perfect, as Christ said on the Sermon on the Mount. Time matures us. All of us who are older than the youngest ones in here, time changes us. You fight, putting on weight. A few of you don't. Phil, I don't think he could ever put on me. Just, but as we get older, things go south. Humanly. Bodily. Things seem to want to sink. So time matures us because we do not look at things the way we did when we were 20, 30, 40, 50. Time changes us as we see other people, as we see other family members, we see the church people. Time matures us. Most of us. Most of us. Haven't we all seen someone that...

I can't get this story out of my head. I don't think I told Mary this story. She always goes, I never heard that story before. I've been married to you for 50 years or close to it. No, 40 just feels like 50.

Well, that's how she feels. But my father, I was 18, 19 years old, the farm and some old friends of his, which would have made him about 40. He hadn't seen in 20 years, came by our farm in Tennessee. And he used to tell me this story because this is a guy he used to run around with when he was 20, 18, 20 years old. And I'll never forget the look on my father's face when he came up and the families were talking and everything. And then the guy goes, hey, Charles, father's name.

You know, those old dirty magazines we used to look at. And he goes, I still got some in the car. You want to go look at them? I'm 18 and I'm looking at my dad like and my dad looks at him and goes, no, we don't do that. But it made it real. This guy was 40, 45 years old, still didn't mature. And we all known somebody in our life, maybe that way, not quite as bad as that guy. But this is what changes us. Time changes us, but time with God really should change you. You spend time in here.

You spend time on your knees. You're going to be changed. And if you don't spend time with God in His word, on your knees, then don't expect change. If you don't listen to Him, why should God listen to you? Oh, because He loves me. He will never leave me nor forsake me.

He will never leave me nor forsake me. Wake up mature. Can you imagine spending your life coming to the end of your life and you're the same person you were 40 years before? For some of you, it might be your language. You may have cleaned up your language. Who told you to do that? The Bible says a few things about it. But you know what teaches you? Time. Because you see people who use foul language, who want to use four-letter words, or the F-word for verbs and nouns and everything else, and you look at it and you go, no, no, don't want to do that.

Except when you're a kid, you may say something. Just to feel like you're an adult, because adults say those words. But then later on, adults don't say those words. They mature with God. This is what He's wanting us to mature. Remember the word? Continually transformed. Are we? Are we not just a better version of us 20, 30 years ago? Oh, well, I'm just a more mature person. Is this what God's looking for? No. No.

He doesn't need a better version of yourself. From 18. He needs a Christ-like person. He needs us to be like Christ, which means we have to be transformed. That means our mind has to change. Our outlook on life has to change. How we treat other people has to change. I found it interesting, because Tuesday I was in Jamaica, flew in. Wednesday I had a funeral to do for a deacon who had died there, Courtney Lottery. Known him for 15 years, and Thursday I flew out. But when I attended the funeral, I conducted the main part, the sermon.

But it was a huge church. It was a Baptist church. And three to four hundred people held five hundred, and it was pretty close. And I looked out the audience. I was the only white person there. Okay. That didn't. I didn't think about that. I just looked and go, well, is anybody else here? And, you know, if you're in a sea of Jamaicans and you're white, you kind of stand out. Right, Clive? You can kind of see. You know? I mean, like today Clive is, because Jonathan and everybody else.

So, I mean, I thought, well, is there anyone here that Courtney knew who might be white? But there wasn't. But you know what? It was amazing. After the funeral, you know, you greet so many of these people. There's a repass and so many I never even knew. They made me feel so at home. I don't think they saw white. And I didn't see black. That's the way it should be. This world hasn't achieved that yet, have they?

No. No. Was that an issue with Christ? No. So, if we're like Christ, should it be an issue to us? Absolutely not. So, we don't look at, or we can't look at the world's standards and say, I can do better. We have to look at Christ's standards and say, that is the standard. He's all about love.

But we can't do it. See, we may be a better version of ourselves. And we can do that, but we cannot be transformed into Christ's image without one thing. God's Holy Spirit. What we'll talk about tomorrow. We can't. We can't do it. You can't be like Christ unless you have that spirit. It's God's spirit. It's not yours. But He gives it to you, and there's a power there. And that's what's so very, very important. Go with me to 2 Corinthians 11 from New King James. 2 Corinthians 11.

Verse 2. I found these words very interesting because Paul's talking to the Corinthians. You know the Corinthians? They're like us. They kind of messed up. But they got better. Second letter, they got better. Hopefully, they were being continually transformed. But he said something here in these words to them. And he said, verse 2, For I am jealous with... With what? Godly jealous. Godly jealous. You mean God's jealous? Yes. And jealousy's not, I thought it was a bad thing. No, he says he is a jealous God. What's he jealous about? The bride! He doesn't want you with anybody else. Right, Bill? He doesn't. He's into you being intimate with his son. You being prepared to be the bride of Christ. That is what he's jealous about. And Paul is saying that.

I'm not a jealous man. I trust my wife. But if an old boyfriend decided he'd come in and sit down, and I'd be okay with that, talk to him everything else, but he'd put his arm around her, I'd get jealous. Okay? That's not appropriate. So maybe she would smack him, maybe she wouldn't. But this is what Paul is telling him. I brought you to this point. I brought you. I brought you here. We went through all that 1 Corinthians stuff. We went through all this stuff. And now you're here. Yes, but now there's a new problem as you're being continually transformed. And I'm jealous. What was he jealous about? For I have betrothed you to one husband. I'm telling you that right now. If you have God's Holy Spirit, that's who you're betrothed to. That I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted with, excuse me, from, what? Not with, from. That's a big. Corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. That's what I'm here to talk about today. Simplicity of Christ. There's nothing hard about it. If you've ever fallen in love with someone, and you married them, right, Norm? A hundred years ago, right? When you fall in love with someone, it isn't hard, it isn't complicated, unless you make it that way. Why? Because it's simple. It's simple. And there is nothing complicated or hard about our being betrothed to Christ. People make it that way. Oh, well, you need a doctor's degree in theology before you're truly under stunned. No, it isn't. It's so simple for us. Finish this section here. For if he comes preaching another Jesus whom you have not preached, whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not have accepted, you may well put up with it. So he's kind of shocking them into and guess what? Somebody comes in and starts telling you how different things could be and great could be. And haven't we all heard that in a church before? Oh, no, it's this way and it's this way and it's this way. And you really have to understood the triune of God. You have to understand the triune of God. You have to understand the incredible depth of these things. No, there's nothing hard or complicated about it. And this is what he's trying to tell them because as you can look down, there's been false ministers coming in saying, well, no, you need to know the Greek word means this and the Greek word means that. No, you don't need to know any Greek. I know some of the most dedicated people I've ever known in my life who have passed on who will be there at the wedding supper. Barely had a high school education if they had one. They understood God on a simple level. They understood God on his level, spiritual. They didn't have to razzle and dazzle you with all these things. It's interesting because, go back up to where it says, so your so your minds may be corrupted. It's interesting because the NIV, the NIV translates that corrupted from the Greek word, which actually means let astray, let astray. Let astray.

Can actually mean the Greek word means to deceive. But I like the other word entice. Can someone entice you to leave the Christ you know for Christ they may teach you? Can someone entice you to follow God that maybe you've not heard about before? Oh wow, I didn't know God was that way. Because that's what he's talking about. Can someone do that to you? In other words, in physical work about the intimacy, the intimacy, can somebody just come and steal your man? Can somebody steal your man? Jolene, yes. Song, yes. Because that's what is talking about. You being enticed. So what's he saying? The simplicity that is in Christ. The simplicity in your relationship with God. If you want to make it academic, you want to make it, you know, theoretical, that's fine. But that's not what God's about. God's about you, his Son, his Spirit, your wedding. That's it. That's it. It's not hard. And if anybody tries to make it hard, run, run, because that's not what this book is about. It's not given for us to blow our minds. It's given to us to transform us, to be like his Son. We can read all about in the Old Testament about his Son as the Word, as God, because he was the God that spoke in the Old Testament. He's the one that inspired and moved this. So we can see all about it. But then we get the New Testament and it tells us, wow, that God walked on earth and had to live life just like we do. And so we get to know him on a different level. How he handled things. If we're going to be just like him, because that's what it's about. Simplicity! Simplify! Do we? Do we simplify our lives? Maybe if you're retired, you may have said, I know my father when he retired, he goes, I didn't know how I had so much to do when I retired. Maybe many of you have said that. I didn't know. I just was busy. Any of you that read Henry David Thoreau?

Mine was way back when I was 16 years old. I read in Walden. Thoreau was a poet. He was an essayist. He was a writer. He was a novelist. But his life was so busy. And it felt like he never had time for anything. Until he went to this little shack by a pond, Walden's pond. And he spent time there. No one else was around him. Two years. Barely saw anyone. He had time to reflect. And this was in the 1800s. He didn't even have a cell phone. He didn't have TV. He didn't have computers. And yet his life was so busy. He knew there was something better to life than busy. And so he wrote after being there. And he could really talk about it because Henry David Thoreau dived a tuberculosis at age 44. So he appreciated the life that he had, but he wish he had more. And so by writing this, he was saying that he should have taken life slower.

But he wrote, I quote, he said, our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify. And that's what he wanted to be defined by. He didn't have enough time. Regrets, oh, he had one of you. But he found peace. He found he had time to talk to God. Yes, he believed in God. So what are you defined by? Your life? And I'm not talking about one word. How many of us would define our lives by one word? busy. busy. busy. We are always busy. We always have something to do.

Theresa, I thought that was your arm popping up. Yes. So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to go, well, it's just the way life is. Well, wait a minute. We got we. We have electricity. Take those people in Haiti. Got them a house, but there's no electricity in the house. But it's a nice house, but there's an electric pole so they can run electricity far better than they've ever. Water is outside. They have to carry it in buckets, but it's there. What would they think to go in and turn on a faucet like we do? And their showers are standing in a bucket and then opening the bucket and watching yourself.

Simplify. Do we want to simplify and go back that way? No, we have so much to make our lives supposedly easy. And then what do we do? Yes, we find ways to make it busier. I didn't carry my cell phone today for that same reason. Late at home. Because if it's there, I'm sitting there. Okay, I wonder if somebody's going to call me one minute. This is a Sabbath. I can do that. Monday through Friday.

I'm not telling you my problems. I'm telling you what I want to try to do to simplify my life. Matter of fact, when I retire, I told Mary, this phone's gone. I want my old flip phone. I want my old flip phone so I can't look at any other. I can just answer phone calls. You know, because when I'm retired, who needs me? Who needs me? You know, I'm like, I want a simpler life. Don't we all? But what are we doing about it? We're finding more gadgets, more things to do.

Probably not the sermon you thought you'd get today. But you know, leaving God out usually means cluttering up our lives with stuff to distract us. Because you see, the stuff we have to distract us, instead of simplifying, we've got all this stuff. So all this stuff we have to save us time to make our lives easier. All they do is clutter up our lives. So when do we change? When do we change? I want to use a phrase a man wrote in an article not long ago about technology, about our lives today, and he used three words about life. He said, life, that's not one of the words. And the three last words are, use us, us, up. Use, use us, up. Instead of us using life and enjoying it, we just, what? We just used up. Next thing you know, you turn around and I was aging, you're like, where am I? What have I become? Do you know what God wants you to become? The bride. That is as simple as you could make it. What do you have to do for the bride? What's the groom like? What word, one word, would you describe the groom? Love. What does he want from his bride? Love. That's not complicated. That's very simple. Except we think, oh, well, we have to do this and this. No, this gives us all the, but once we know, once we know the foundation of what he wants, and we know the Ten Commandments, we know the holy days, we know what not to eat and everything else. Okay, it may have taken us years to learn that, but once you learn that, you've got it. You need to redo it every year? No, you know it. Simplify your life. Didn't Christ make it simple? When they ask which is the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God the first, he said. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, mind, beat. And the second is like it, love your neighbor. That is so simple. How good a job are you doing on it? Because you said, well, you know, because you see, he gives us his Holy Spirit so that we can be really, really good at it. So if you're not really, really good at it, or you're not really, really trying, it's because you're not using the Spirit. You're not using enough of it.

Let me finish this up.

So intimacy with Christ, becoming like Christ. What can or will seduce you away from Christ? Anybody who's been around church a long time has seen it. You may have seen Christians who got seduced by people who they lost faith in. So I don't need this. What will it take to seduce you to leave your future mate?

Intimacy with God is not complicated. It's not intellectual. It is simple. And yet people today, because we're very educated, because we have such a deep understanding, they mock simplicity. They mock simple people. People looked at me 14 years ago, 13 and a half years ago, when the United Church of God hired me. I was the first one that had never attended Ambassador College. Didn't go. And so I didn't have the understanding that many did. And some mocked me because of it. But I must tell you, you know, I had three years of theology classes. 90% of what I know is in. I got directly from this word, this Bible. I'm glad I took the classes, but I didn't need them. Because if you study this word, you use that conduit, that Holy Spirit that God has given you to go into this word. What did Christ say? It. He uses or he because of the masculine. It will teach you all things. And it has. It has. And I'm not condemning anybody that has graduated from Ambassador College. That's not my. That's not my thing. But it's not complicated. To be in his kingdom. What do you say? The first shall be last and the. Yes. Yes. I appreciate this. I love it. Mary knows I study it probably too much. Yeah, because sometimes I get bogged down because I'll get to study in something in my office and the door is locked and I go from this book to this book and next thing you know, six hours have gone by and I'm studying two words. And I look around, oh man, I didn't mean to do that because I have what? Too much to do. I'm too busy. No. If God guides you when you're reading this book to stay in it, stay in it. Don't say I need to go. Well, I need to pick up this. I need to go do this. No. If he's guiding you with the spirit because these are his words, his words are spirit. They are life as Jesus Christ said. This fulfills our destiny. This will guide us where we need to go. I just feel sometimes we make things harder than they have to be. In Christ's day, they ask the disciples, or they ask each other, where did these men get these things? Remember that? Where did they get it? Yeah, they didn't know where Jesus got it. Where did these men? Because Peter was speaking like this, and he was like, you know, and they didn't even know historians don't know whether he could even read or write. Where did he get these things? God, through the Holy Spirit, it is time, brethren, that we continue this transformation in each and every one of our lives for the betterment of this church, for the betterment of each other so that we have prepared the bride for the work that will be done. So plain and simple. I can go to Proverbs 25. I'm sorry, Proverbs 2 and verse 5. Proverbs 2 and verse 5. He pulled it up through the Moffat translation, which I liked because I looked at 15 different versions of this because I wanted to end the sermon with pointing in the right direction. So then you shall see what reverence for the Eternal is. Do we have reverence? If you look at another translation, it says fear. Okay, this translation isn't about fear. We should be in a relationship with God that we do not fear Him. We revere Him. It's gone from being a 12-year-old that can get your tail whipped by your dad for doing something wrong of fear because I had that fear, my father growing up. But when I became mature, I didn't fear Him anymore. I revered Him. This is what God wants us to do, for you shall see what reverence for the Eternal is and find out what the knowledge of God truly means. Do we want that? Do we really, really want that? I hope so.

Because it has deep meaning. But you know what's great about this verse? It is so simple. That's why I picked the Moffat. It is so simple because we revere God and He opens up all this knowledge through His Holy Spirit to us. Just so we can be there on that day, that wedding day. He says, I want you there. I want you at that wedding supper. So what will it help us? 1 Corinthians 2.9 says, I has not seen nor is entered into the heart of man the things that God has planned for those who love Him, but the beauty of it is the next verse because of that knowledge. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit, capital S. For the Spirit searches all the things, yes, the deep things of God. Nothing, nothing that you want to know about God will be held back from you. Nothing, nothing. Nothing is in a time to continue the transformation.

Pentecost, time to prepare, to simplify, and to be intimate with God.