Jump Start # 2456

1 Corinthians 2:11 “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man expect the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.”

People have been saying a expression for so long now that many not only believe it to be true, but some even assume that it’s in the Bible somewhere. The expression? “God wants me to be happy.” God wants me to be happy, even if it means disobeying His word. Being happy is believed to be the greatest achievement in life. Even in the fiber of this country is the “Pursuit of Happiness.” God wants me to be happy, which translates to, if I’m unhappy in my marriage, then I ought to walk away. And, when questioned why one does that, the answer is obvious, “God wants me to be happy.” If I find someone who makes me laugh more, I ought to be allowed to leave my marriage and marry that other person, because we all know, God wants me to be happy. Now, if going to worship services every week is just too demanding, and I find preaching not to my style, then I shouldn’t be required to attend, because we all know, God wants me to be happy. If hanging out with my friends on Friday nights, having a few drinks and being a little wild and crazy makes me happy, then it cannot be wrong. Because we all know, God wants me to be happy.

Just a few reminders here.

First, “God wants me to be happy,” is not a verse in the Bible. It’s simply not there. But the opposite isn’t better, God wants me to be miserable. What God wants is for you and I to follow Him. He wants us to trust Him. He wants us to love Him, worship Him, and allow Him to be the Lord of our lives. In so doing, we become the best that we can. This will make us holy and righteous, which the Bible DOES say. This will bring a peace within us, help us get along with us and give us a purpose and a compass in life. Happiness will result from a life that follows God but happiness is not the goal nor the destination. God is.

Second, since the Bible never says, “God wants me to be happy,” how do I know that God is not more interested in me being physically fit? Or, could it be that God wants me to be debt free? Or, could it be that God wants me to take a new job overseas? Or, could it be that God wants me to get a Master’s Degree? Or, could it be that God wants me to downsize? Or, could it be that God wants me to move my parents in with us? Or, could it be that God wants me to invest in gold? Or, could it be that God wants me to vote for Trump?

When we stick “God wants me to be…” on to anything it sounds divine. Who is going to argue with God? It seems that this is destined and this is the right thing to do. But could it be that we confuse what we want with what we think God wants. I want this, so in time that becomes, “God wants me to do this.” And, when God wants me to do something, there is no stopping that. We best do it because this is what God wants. So, it could be that I want to be happy and I translate that into God wants me to be happy. And sticking my face into a bowl of chocolate really makes me happy, so obviously, God wants me to stick my face into a bowl of chocolate. Does He? Naaman wanted to go dip in other rivers. He was told to go to the Jordan. He was angry about that. Cain offered God vegetables instead of a lamb. He must have thought “This is what I want to do and so, this is what God wants.” God rejected that offering. The text says, “He had no regard for it.” Jeroboam wanted the nation not to go to Jerusalem to worship. So, he established two alternative places. He must have thought that this will be just as good. God will like this. He didn’t. Aaron led the nation into building a golden calf and rewriting their history. The people seemed to love it. They were dancing and having a great time. I expect no one said, “Do we have to go to church?” It was incredible. It was awesome. It also violated several of the commandments that were in the hands of Moses. God didn’t approve, nor accept that worship.

All of this brings us to our verse today. No one knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit that is in him. We’d say, “Only you know what you are thinking. “ Now, we often, especially in a marriage, don’t go along with this. How often does one person say to the other, “I know what you are thinking?” Do you? You might guess right, but you really do not know. I think about this often when I’m preaching. I see people looking at me and I wonder are they with me or are they day dreaming, are their minds elsewhere? When a person nods his head in approval or says “Amen,” that lets me know, “that guy is on the same page with me.” But otherwise, I don’t know. I don’t know what you are thinking and you don’t know what I am thinking.

If you and I don’t know what others are thinking, how can we know what God is thinking? No one knows the thoughts of God expect the Spirit of God. The next verse Paul says, we have received the Spirit of God. In other words, God has shown us, told us, and revealed to us, what He is thinking. That’s the Bible. Without the Bible, you and I are guessing. And, this leads us back to, “God wants me to be happy.” How does a person know that? He doesn’t. He can’t. The only way he would know that is from the Bible. Without telling us in the Bible, we don’t know.

There is no telling where this could take a person if he started assuming what God likes. God likes the Dodgers more than the Reds, I could say. God likes Republicans more than Democrats. God likes Pepsi more than Coke. God likes Classical Music more than Pop music. God likes the Midwest better than the West Coast. God likes baseball more than football. God likes America more than Europe. God likes Chevy more than Ford. There is no end to this senseless guessing. I expect on many of those things I just listed, God really doesn’t care. God wants us to be holy, righteous and following Him. One can do that in Europe, Africa or America.

God wants me to be happy, has been a green light for many to ignore the teachings of the Bible and to do things that the Bible prohibits. They have put their happiness above all things. If anything, God wants me to make Him happy. The master of the five talent man was pleased when his servant did what he hoped. Paul said, “we make it our ambition to please the Lord.” That’s where the emphasis needs to be. What makes God happy? Finding the answer to that will lead me to the life that God wants me to live. Standing up for Him, put some in fiery furnaces, lion’s dens and dark prisons. Yet, their choices, their convictions, their faith, is what pleased the Lord. They may not have been personally happy, but their faith pleased the Lord.

Rather than saying, “God wants me to be happy,” we ought to be saying, “God wants me to please Him.” And, there is no way that I can please Him if I am violating and disobeying what He said in the Bible.

Our pursuit ought not to be of our happiness, but of His pleasure. There is a difference.

Roger

Jump Start #1830

1 Corinthians 2:11 “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.”

Our passage today touches upon the revelation of God. Paul is showing that the message that he preached came from revelation of God. No one knows what God is like, how God thinks outside of how God has revealed Himself.

God is different than we are. Couples that have been married for decades can pretty much know how each other feels about things. I was at a marriage retreat years ago, and one of the exercises that we had to do was the men had to pick out lunch for the wives and the wives had to pick out lunch for the men. That wasn’t very hard for me. I’ve eaten thousands of meals with my wife. From the menu, I pretty much knew what she would do. When we go out to eat, she always orders water to drink. After enough times, I know that is what she wants. I know what kind of movies she likes. If there is a lot of guns, car chases and shooting, she will pass on those. I know what she likes.

Parents are the same way with their children. When the children are young, the parents can choose what the child will eat. For birthdays and Christmas, the parents shop knowing what their child will like. They know their child.

God is not like that. His thoughts and His ways are so much higher than ours. Bible history reveals man trying to guess what God would like and failing. Cain offered a sacrifice of vegetables, unlike the animal sacrifice that his brother offered. I doubt Cain really thought, “I’m going to do this and I just know that God will hate this and be upset with me.” No, he must have thought that God would accept it. He didn’t. Aaron’s sons are another example. As priests, they presented a fire that was unauthorized. Not only did God reject that, He used that very fire to consume and destroy them. Why did they do this? They must have thought that God would like this. They messed up trying to figure out how God thinks.

Those examples show us that we can’t predict, anticipate or even “figure” God out on our own. For a person to say, “I just know that God will like this,” is very dangerous and such thinking will backfire. What we do know about God is revealed in Scriptures. Guessing what God thinks, likes, or approves is something that we cannot know.

I mentioned in a sermon yesterday concerning a point that Jesus was made like us, that He was in Mary’s womb for nine months. On the surface that seems fine. We too, were in our mother’s womb for about nine months. The difference is that we were not fully developed, especially in mind. We can’t remember our first year. We may have heard our parents telling us things. We may look at pictures and videos but we really don’t remember being six months old. We don’t remember our first birthday party. Most of us do not remember much about our second year. Jesus was God in Mary’s womb. What was He doing for 9 months? The Bible says that God removes kings and appoints kings. During those early years as an infant, was Jesus aware of what the Father and the Holy Spirit were doing in the world? Was He kept in the loop of world events? Did He still participate? Was the Godhead reduced to basically two parts until Jesus was thirty years old? Guess. Guess. Guess. Speculate. We don’t know. We will probably never know. What we know is what has been revealed.

This is more than just a pivotal point that shows God is different than we are, this has huge doctrinal ramifications. If I build a faith around an idea rather than around Scripture, mostly likely my faith system will be flawed and I may be standing right along side of Cain, who disappointed God with his sacrifice. The modern thought is that anything in the name of Jesus, God likes. So, in the field of “music,” you’ll find everything under the category of “Christian Music.” There are contemporary songs, country songs, rap songs, heavy metal songs, pop songs—all filling stages and singing their hearts out to God. Is this what God wants and likes? Sure, people will say. How can it be wrong if it glorifies God? Remember Cain?

Then we look at the activities of churches today. You’ll find everything. Churches have bookstores, coffee shops, gyms, they offer classes on all kinds of subjects, they are a school, a daycare, a Friday night hang out for teens. There are camping trips, oversea trips to build homes. There are food kitchens. I even heard of a place that was inviting the public to bring their dogs to church. The dogs were going to receive a blessing and a treat. I’d hate to be the guy who had to clean up after that event! Do dogs have souls? Do dogs need blessings? Are the proclaimers of God’s word now into the dog business? Did the apostles ever do such things? Maybe Peter blessed an elephant? How could that be wrong? It’s innocent fun. It brings families and pets together. Where do folks get these ideas? Not from the Bible. You can’t put a finger on a verse that leads to the conclusion that we need to bring our pets to worship services for a blessing. All of this came from the thoughts of man. Someone came up with this wild idea. He presented it to others and they went along with it. And under all of this was the idea that God will like this. No one does things with the intention that I know we’ll get in trouble for doing this from God. I know God will be mad. No. That’s not the thought. We tend to think that we know what God wants. We tend to think that we know how God thinks. We don’t. We can’t. That’s the point of our passage today.

It’s time for us to get back to simply following the Bible. It is here that God tells us what to do. The problem lies not with God but with us. We want things beyond the simple. We want originality. We want to be different. We want cutting edge. We want to push the envelopes. We want to be out there. And, we think God is just like that. Instead of following God, we want to blaze new trails. The problem lies with us, not God. We get bored with worship the way God designed it. We want the church to do more than prepare people for Heaven. We want God to think the way we do. He doesn’t. Our thoughts have gotten us into trouble. That’s why Jesus had to come. Our thoughts need changing. Going on our thoughts, is not a good thing to do. We do not have a history of doing well here with God.

It is as simple as Cain and Able. There are those who assume that Cain’s sacrifice was fine with God, it was his attitude that was wrong. That conclusion is not based upon Biblical evidence, but more guessing. Hebrews tells us that “by faith Able offered to God a better sacrifice”. Faith comes from what God has revealed. John tells us that Cain’s deeds were evil. Jude links Cain to rebellion. To think that all Cain needed was a better attitude and God would have been happy with a vegetable sacrifice is not true. Cain offered what he thought God would accept. He didn’t know God. He was wrong.

No one knows the thoughts of God expect the Spirit that has revealed them. Stay with the Scriptures and you will please the Lord. Start trying to figure God out, and you’ll be in a mess very quickly.

Let God speak for Himself.

Roger