“First Love: Love with a Purpose
One of the catch phrases of Christianity is the phrase, “personal Lord and Savior.” It’s a good phrase; it implies several things:
§ It implies that Jesus and God are personal, that they’re intimately concerned with the very smallest details of your life. It implies that they know every situation and problem that comes into your life.
§ The word “Lord” can also mean leader, or director. It’s like a personal coach or teacher
o I think of it like a personal piano teacher. Your teacher knows your skills and knows how to get you to the next level because they’ve been there before. They may have you do drills or exercises that will help you get stronger or more dexterity in your hands. Because the teacher is older, more experienced, hired to help you get better, and let’s face it better, than you are, you trust what he tells you and you practice what he says to practice. That’s the idea behind Jesus being “LORD”
§ Savior implies the image of a worried father running into a burning house to save his son or daughter. The child is unable to rescue himself, so the father risks his own life for the safety of his child because his love is so strong.
That’s an amazing image when we think about God that way. We’ve all had a crummy teacher or a bad coach or a father that would probably not risk his own skin to save us from an ant bite, much less a burning building. God, though, is the best parts of all of those people, without the worst parts. Any good that you see in a person or teacher or coach is a reflection of something good that’s in God.
The “personal Lord and Savior” aspect of God is a wonderful thing to think about and meditate on. It means that He knows all the things about you, even the things that you’d probably want to hide, and He loves you anyway. He loves you enough to want what’s best for you and protect you from the things that will hurt you, so He coaches you and directs you. He loves you so much that He would put His own life on the line to make sure that you get out of the burning house alive. That’s an amazing image.
That’s a big thing to grab onto, but is there a bigger picture? Is that all it is? It’d be pretty annoying if you had someone around watching your every move, correcting every single thing you did wrong, pointing out all of your mistakes, and the reason they said they did it is because they wanted you to be better.
§ That’s not very compelling is it? After awhile, you’d probably turn around and yell at your teacher that you’re doing OK on your own, so bug off.
§ That’s one thing that happens when we get so caught up in the “personal Lord and Savior” bit. We don’t have any context with which to understand why He’s doing what He’s doing.
§ You want me to be better for what? You want me to do this why? You want me to be like this for what reason?
§ These questions are bound to come, and they’re right to ask if we get so hung up on the “personal Lord and Savior” that we lose sight of the bigger context. Missing the forest for the trees so to speak.
I want to read a passage from the Bible, then we’ll come back to this and hopefully get a glimpse of the big picture.
Exodus 3:1-10
1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight-why the bush does not burn up." 4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!" And Moses said, "Here I am." 5 "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." 6 Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. 7 The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey-the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."
Moses had been a shepherd for 40 years, taking care of his father-in-law’s sheep. That’s like you going to work for 40 years at your girlfriend’s dad’s garage. One day he’s leading the sheep over by some mountains where there’s fresh grass and maybe a nice stream for the sheep to get some water, when he sees a bush on fire. He checks it out and the bush talks. The bush says, “This is God, I’ve heard my peoples complaints about the hard work they’re doing, about their slavery and fear of their masters. I hear them, and I want you to know, but I also want them to know that I’ve heard them, and I’m not going to take it any more. I want them to know that I’m going to get them out of their slavery, and I’m going to take them to a place that’s so green you won’t believe it. I’m going to take them to a place that’s overflowing with good stuff. Their crops will be easy to grow, the land will be good, it’s going to be like a paradise. They’ve worked hard for a long time, and now the hard work is over. I’m going to let them rest for awhile because they’ve had such a hard time.” About this time, Moses had to be thinking, “Atta boy God! Good call. They’ve had a hard time for the last 400 years. They deserve a little rest. Thanks for letting me know, I’m all in favor of it. You go get em.” Then God says, “Go. I’m sending you to the king to tell him that he’s gotta let my people go.” The next chapter is great, it talks about how Moses argued with God about his task. He gave all kinds of reasons. More on that later.
This is significant for us for a few reasons:
First, Malachi 3:6 says, “I, the Lord, do not change…” God is unchanging. He has the same heart today that He had 1000 years ago, that He did 10,000 years ago, that He did before the earth or time began.
§ God’s heart is for His people. God heard the cry of the Israelites, the people that He loved, the people that He had chosen for Himself. God saw the oppression that they were under. God says that their cries reached up to Him, and He was concerned about their suffering.
§ The unchangeable God still hears the cries of His people, and He is still concerned about their suffering. Every time you or one of your friends cries out for help, He cares and He’s concerned.
§ Because He’s God, he hears the silent cries too. Every time a young person cries out for love by giving away the body that He created for purity, He hears. Every time a person cries out to feel good and be accepted by giving in to something, He hears.
§ We’re not slaves in the physical, slave owning sense any more. We aren’t owned by another person who whips us and beats us and sells us at an auction, but Jesus says in John 8:34 that every person who sins is a slave of sin.
o We don’t think of it that way. When we do the things that we know we shouldn’t do, we don’t always feel like we’re in slavery, we feel like we’re making our own choices based on some other factor. But we’re slaves to that other factor.
o Sometimes we know we’re slaves though. Sometimes we sin, again, and we know it, and we feel wretched about it. We lay in bed at night wondering how any kind of God could love and care about us. We tell ourselves that we’ll never again walk down that road, that we’ll never again make that mistake, but then we do, and the cycle repeats itself. We are slaves to our sins. When God spoke to Moses, He said He had heard His peoples cry, and He was concerned about them. God, whose heart never changes, wanted more than anything to set His people free from the slavery that they were under.
§ When God sets us free from slavery, He does it in grand fashion. He doesn’t set us free from slavery and leave us in a slum; His plan for freedom is to take us into a place that is overflowing with everything we’ll ever need to be secure. He’s wanting to take His people from the desert of slavery into the promised land of freedom.
§ God’s purpose is for all of His people to be free. God didn’t just list of the names of a few people, He said He wanted all of His people to be free. Every single one of them. He knew that if the whole nation was free, that meant that every single individual would be free as well.
§ God has a plan for your generation. He sees where we’re at. Consider the cries for help from your friends. They don’t cry out blatantly, but do you have any friends who act a certain way because they want more than anything to be loved? Do you know anyone who changes when ever certain people are in the room to impress them? Those are cries for acceptance. Do you know anyone who steals compulsively, or lies compulsively, or cheats without conscience? That’s a cry for help. Do you know anyone who drinks away their whole life? Do you think that might be a cry for help?
§ God’s plan for this generation is for every single person to be set free from the slavery of trying to live up to some standard that will always be out of reach. He’s trying to set all His people free, all of them, from the slavery of chasing a pleasure or an acceptance that’s always based on something that they’ve done or something that they can do to be accepted. His desire is freedom for His people.
God wants nothing more than a complete revolution in your generation. He wants nothing less than to have an entire generation of people who have tasted the promised land, and seen that it truly is a land overflowing with milk and honey. It is sweet, and it is thick, and God wants every single person He has created to know that sweetness.
That’s the problem with the “Personal Lord and Savior” theology. It’s true. He is personal, He wants to be Lord, and He is the only one qualified to be your Savior, but it doesn’t stop there.
“Personal Lord & Savior” focus leads to what is an epidemic in the church today. I call it religious consumerism. It is focused on the personal aspect of religion, so it always says feed me, feed me, feed me. It’s always concerned with achieving another experience, with doing another study, with doing one more thing. It’s not the least bit concerned about the masses of people all around them that will die and spend eternity separated from God if they don’t hear about His love.
Religious consumerism says, “my religion works for me, but who am I to tell anyone else that they’re way is wrong.” People who are sold out and focused only on the fact that Jesus is their “Personal Lord and Savior” miss the fact that God, through Jesus Christ, wants to set an entire generation free from their slavery. He has heard the cries of the people, He has heard the cries from each one of His children, and He is moved by compassion, and His desire is to see each one of them freed from their bondage.
He is moved to compassion, so what does He do? He tells Moses, “you go. I’m sending you to the king to tell Him to set my people free.”
His desire is for a generation of free men, but it starts with you. You go. Moses was a free man, He was living His life, making His way, He was in a relationship with God, He was trained by God and He was sent into the desert by God to be a shepherd for 40 years. Moses was experiencing the freedom of a “Personal Lord and Savior.” That wasn’t what God had planned for him though. God said Go, tell the king to let my people go.
I don’t know why He chooses to do things the way that He does. I don’t know why God doesn’t choose to have us live in a little cocoon of personal relationship, not ever having any impact on others lives. I don’t know why He decided to use a shepherd to set His people free, but He did.
Moses was ordinary. In chapters 4-6 Moses tells God all the reasons why he can’t be the one to lead His people. See if they sound familiar. He told God he
§ Wasn’t able (3:11)
§ Didn’t know what to say (3:13)
§ Didn’t have the authority (4:1)
§ Wasn’t a good speaker (4:10)
§ Didn’t have the right “gifts” (4:13)
§ Had failed before (5:23)
§ Wasn’t accepted by people (6:12)
You know what God’s response was? Look at chapter 4:14, “The Lord’s anger burned against Moses.”
God doesn’t get mad at us when we fail. God doesn’t get mad at us when we make mistakes. God gets mad at us when we never get off the bench because we’re caught up in what we’re doing, or in our own short comings.
Why does this make God mad? Because more than anything else in the entire universe, He wants His people to be free. He’s chosen to use ordinary people to make that happen, and every day He calls people, and asks them to go out, to recognize the slavery that is all around them, and go where He sends them. The answer to every one of Moses replies was, “Don’t worry about it. I’m God, I’m sending you, I’m not going to leave you. If you’ll do what I say and go where I want you to go, I’ll be with you, so who cares. JUST GO!!”
God wants to raise up a generation of people, He wants every single one of the people that you know to experience His freedom and His land of promise. He chose to send Moses. He chooses ordinary people who can’t seem to find a good thing to say about themselves, and He tells them to go tell a king that it’s time for His people to be free.
He’s calling out for your generation to be a generation that is free, that lives in a life and a way that is free from every trapping of slavery. His call is going out today, and He’s calling you.
If you and all your friends were in jail, and the jailer came up to you and said, “You can go free, and any of your friends that you want can come with you.” Who would you bring? All of them right? You wouldn’t say, “No thanks, I’ve got my own personal relationship with freedom, and besides, I need to learn more about what it really means to be free before I can convince my friends that they’ll want to be free too. Besides, who am I to tell them that they want to be free? How do I know that they’re not completely content being in jail?” Hopefully you’d bring all your friends with you. This situation is no different. The jailer has been defeated, and freedom has been offered to every person you know. If you’re a Christian, you are free. What’s keeping you from bringing your friends and your generation with you?
And Moses’ call to lead His people to freedom came by stopping at a burning bush. It seems amazing that the bush didn’t burn, but I think what’s more amazing is that Moses noticed the bush in the first place. If he were like us, he’d have been so caught up in the daily routine of tending the sheep that he wouldn’t have paid any attention to a burning bush. He was in the desert, it was dry, it was hot, bushes caught fire all the time. But Moses noticed that the bush was on fire, so he went to see it, and He had an encounter with God.
What bushes have you been missing because you’re too busy? What bushes are burning all around you that God is trying to use to get your attention that you never see. Those bushes today look like any one of your friends, crying out for help, that you don’t hear because of the busyness of your life. There are people in this group right here, people that are sitting around you today that are crying out for help. Are you noticing? Or is there some personal concern that you’re not quite over yet?
Coming to hear the voice of God is a discipline. The world screams at us every single day, the busyness, the rat race, the grind, the whole life cycle thing is faster than we know what to do with, and every bit of it seems amazingly and undeniably urgent. It seems like right now is the only thing that’s real, and right now you’ve got to do a project, get ready for a date, catch up with a friend, and do the dishes. As you do those things, the bushes burn around you and God continues to cry out for someone to lead a generation out of slavery.
We talked about praying, and bible reading, and getting alone with God. We called them disciplines or habits that we need to help us grow. We need those habits so that we don’t miss the call of God, so that we don’t miss the bushes burning all around us. Truth is truth. It’s not subjective, and it’s not every man for himself. The truth is one day every single person is going to stand before God and give an account of the time that they spent on earth. What are you going to say? Are you going to stand in a line of your friends, the people that you sit by at school, the people you pass in the halls, and God is going to tell you that there were bushes burning all around you. On that day, some will not be able to enter that place of rest. Many of those who were crying out for help will cry out again, and wonder why no one shook them and explained it to them. On that day, I think that there will be many many people who have devoted their whole lives only to the personal relationship, and they will miss God’s bigger plan, His desire is to set a generation free.
God wants you to have a personal relationship. He wants you to spend time with Him, and He wants you to know how much He loves you personally. He wants you to know that He’ll be with you always, and that He’ll be the answer to any and every problem that you might face. But He wants to do that so that you’ll be bold in being a part of setting your entire generation free. You’ll find best that God is right there meeting your ever need, that He’s most personal, when you’re stepping out, helping Him free His people.
Even the disciplines, the things that you’ll do largely by yourself, are a means to accomplish His greater purpose. How much easier would your personal relationship be if every person you knew were a Christian, striving for the same goals you are striving for? How much easier would it be to live a godly life if every single person you knew or saw was dedicated to holy living. That’s what God wants, and He wants to use you to do it. He wants to use the people that He has purposely, chosen and placed to be the ones that bring about His purpose.
Maybe you’ve never heard the fact that God wants you to be free. Maybe you never even knew that freedom existed. It does, and you can experience it. God wants to use you. God wants you to be a major player in what He’s got planned. But it’s a decision you have to make. I can’t force you, and God won’t force you. He never does, He never will. He wants you to trust Him to set you free, and He wants you to trust Him to use you to set others free as well. Where are you? Will you play the part that He has planned for you?
Challenge:
Think of the difference in your school if your group of friends understood their call like Moses did. When you’re at school, think of every person that you see, and imagine the difference in the school, community, and world, if you were a passionate follower of Christ. Begin taking steps to make that happen.
