Fellowship with God (Part 2)

Knowing God — Steve Gregg

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Fellowship with God (Part 3)

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Fellowship with God (Part 2)

Knowing GodSteve Gregg

Discover the essence of fellowship with God as Steve Gregg unveils the Biblical truth that God desires to have a relationship with us. Through various Scripture references, Gregg emphasizes that God created us for fellowship and not just to play it safe in the world. He highlights the importance of seeking God with faith, drawing near to Him with full assurance, and walking in the light by acknowledging our weaknesses through confession. Additionally, Gregg explores the deeper meaning of thanksgiving and praise as expressions of intimacy and personal appreciation towards God. Prepare to delve into the richness of fellowship with God and the significance of drawing near to Him.

Transcript

In our last session, we began exploring what the Bible has to say, and therefore what God has to say about our fellowship with Him, with God. And that was, our last lecture was more or less introductory to the general subject of fellowship with God. And I mentioned, and all we really got through, I thought we might get through more, but we did not.

All we got through in that lecture was a consideration of the prerequisites for fellowship with God. To commune with God, to walk with God, to dwell with God, to interact with God, and for Him to interact with us, to have mutual companionship. This is fellowship with God, and it doesn't happen with everybody.

Not everybody has fellowship with God, though my theology, as I understand it, would indicate that anyone might fellowship with God were they to avail themselves of the open door that God has provided for all who will show the same interest that He has in it, and will make the same commitments to it that He has made. And the reason that not all enjoy fellowship with God is because there are prerequisites for fellowship with God. It cannot happen without at least three things that I found in the Scripture and told you yesterday about and showed you existing.

The first of these does exist. The other two are up to us. The first prerequisite is that God would desire it.

If God did not desire it, we could not have it, no matter how much we might desire it. If God did not disclose Himself, if God did not make the first moves, if God did not crave to fellowship with us and commit Himself to it by sending Jesus and His Holy Spirit, and did not, in other words, open every door and give every advantage at the beginning, we would have no alternatives in this matter. There would simply be no way that we could know God.

We could never fellowship with God. He is invisible. He generally does not speak audibly.

And those are the only ways that we are accustomed to fellowshipping with people. And if God wishes, or if we are, to have a conscious communion with God, it must be that He tears away the veil and comes out and says, Well, I desire it too, and I am coming to commune with you. And I showed you from the Scripture a number of places where the Bible indicates, fortunately for us, that God does desire our fellowship.

But the other two prerequisites are not necessarily in place with all people. And that is, the second is that a person must desire it also. We must desire it as much as God desires it.

It is an insult to God for Him to desire and crave and make every expense to enter into communion with us, and us to come to it with a lackluster, half-hearted commitment, if even the word commitment applies to half-hearted and lackluster approaches. That we would come and take it lightly. When God has taken it weightily, God has not taken it lightly at all.

That He has sent His Son while we were His enemies in order to restore and reconcile us to Himself. God has obviously not taken this matter lightly. Reconciliation with God is not a cheap thing.

It is very expensive to God. And while at one level reconciliation comes to us free, in the sense that we could never pay enough, and therefore He has made it available on accessible terms, that is simply through faith, yet justification, I believe, is by faith. Fellowship requires even more than justification.

I could be wrong about this. It is possible that I am giving too much credit to people who are half-hearted, because I don't really know for sure anyone is even justified if they are half-hearted. God only knows that.

All I can say is that justification is by faith. We may have weak or strong faith, great or little faith, and only God knows how much and what kind of faith suffices to justify. I always recommend that people go for the highest amount.

Just to play it safe. Not only to play it safe, but because that is what we are made for. We are created to enjoy God.

What is the Westminster Catechism? I believe the first question is, what is man's chief end? And the answer given is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. To glorify God, that might not seem too unusual, but to enjoy Him forever, that the Westminster divines would come up with that kind of an answer, is maybe a little surprising, but it is actually quite agreeable with what I understand the Bible to teach. God wants us to enjoy Him forever, starting now.

But enjoying Him doesn't mean just enjoying the things He gives. Some Christians aren't even very good at enjoying the things He gives, and they always want more. They are covetous and there is not any thankfulness in them.

But even if we do enjoy what He gives us, we enjoy this good life that we have, the good weather, the good health, the comforts, the enjoyments that He has given us, and it does say in 1 Timothy chapter 6 that God gives us freely all things to enjoy. He does want us to enjoy what He gives us, within certain parameters of course. But enjoying the things He has given us is not all that we are made for.

We are made to enjoy Him. And I think that there are many Christians who can't even fathom the idea of enjoying God. They think of God as simply one with whom they must have to do when they die, and they hope that all may go well and smoothly in that transition, that when they face God, ultimately that He will not find too much wrong with them, and that their faith in Christ or their religion or whatever else they are counting on may get them past the gate.

And then at least, although many of them don't have a clue what there would be in heaven that they would enjoy, they are sure it will be far better than hell, and that is where they want to go therefore, is to heaven. But there are many who have never conceived of the idea of enjoying God, when people think they are going to be bored in heaven. And there are people like that.

They think they will be bored in heaven. And the only reason they are not bored now is because they have so much of the world to keep them stimulated. And when all these worldly things go away, or they go away from them, they can't imagine what would stimulate them, what would interest them, what would command their fascination, what would entertain them, what would bring enjoyment to them.

You know it says in 1 John 2, verses 15 through 17, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. And it tells us what those things are. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of the heart.

And then it says, for the world passes away, and the lust thereof, but he that does the will of God endures forever. Now if your love is set on the world, and that is going to pass away, and you are going to last forever, time is going to come when you have to leave behind all the things that are of the world. If your heart is set on those, what is going to be left for you? You may well be bored in heaven, if you get there.

I'm not sure that people who love the world get there, because John says in the same passage, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in it. It seems to me that the love of the Father is one of the marks of conversion. So maybe those people won't get there at all.

But I do know that many people have expressed a concern that in heaven, it seems like it might be a little drab, a little unentertaining or something. And as I say, the only reason such people are not bored now apparently, is because they have the world to entertain them. They won't there.

So what is it that will keep people happy in heaven? Well, it's the same thing that keeps Christians, at least who are approaching their relationship with God in the right manner, happy now. Not their circumstances, not their worldly stimulations, but the peace of God that passes all understanding, the joy unspeakable and full of glory, the pleasures forevermore that are at his right hand, the fullness of joy that is in his presence according to Scripture, and not only according to Scripture, but according to Christian testimony through the ages. That God himself is the most enjoyable of all enjoyments that humans are capable of achieving.

And those who have not found God to be enjoyable have never really entered into the kind of communion with God that I'm talking about here. I remember years ago when I was probably, I guess, 17 or 18, I was talking to a minister who struck me as an older man. At the time he was probably younger than I am now.

But I was young and he seemed mature and old. And he was just full of wisdom about the things of God and really edifying to be with. And I enjoyed him.

We talked late into the night one night. I said, I really wish we didn't have to quit. I have to go home now.

And I said, I just enjoy this so much. I wish we could always talk forever. And he says, you know, there are many things we enjoy about each other's company.

But he said the things we enjoy about each other are just things that are a little tiny bit of what God himself is. I mean, unless we're enjoying carnal things. But if we're enjoying spiritual things, if we find spiritual enjoyment with spiritual people, realize that those qualities that we find attractive are qualities of God himself.

And the people that we find attractive in only have a small measure of those qualities. God has those things in infinite measure. And I don't know if everybody here, I'm sure everybody here has at one time or another, found the highest enjoyment in the presence of spiritual people, in spiritual discussion or spiritual activity.

And you've had a bit of taste of it. It's a foretaste of what heaven will be. Only a very small foretaste, because God is all of those qualities that we find appealing in godly people.

And fellowship with him does not have to await our transition from earth to heaven. Fellowship with him is available to us now, if we only would desire it. And we saw that David and other psalmists wrote of their great thirst for God, and their craving to come before God.

And David said, there's only one thing I desire from the Lord. And that's the one thing I'm going to seek after, that I might dwell in the house of the Lord, and behold the beauty of the Lord, and inquire at his temple. This kind of craving for fellowship with God is the only kind that really honors him.

Any lesser craving, any putting of God on a list of priorities, which we maybe even seek God first, and then we go after our other things in our spare time, and leave him out of it, that is insulting to God. God has given everything in his commitment to seek communion with us, and we cannot really enjoy communion with him, or probably even experience it, unless we have a like desire. It's like, as I said last time, when you really desire to be somebody's friend, but they don't like to be your friend so much, you can pursue them, but there will never be communion.

There will never be fellowship of the sort that could be, if that person mutually wanted to be your best friend, or spouse, or something like that. I mean, there has to be mutuality. So we know what God's desire is from scripture, we know what our desire must be, but there's a third prerequisite besides our desire, and that is our conformity.

Paul said, what fellowship has light with darkness? What concord has Christ with Belial, or the temple of God with idols? What agreement? And there can be no fellowship between unlike things. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. That is, he and I have fellowship one with another, you and he have fellowship one with another. If you are in the same place he is, he's in the light, you're in the darkness.

You may talk about having fellowship with God, but you lie and do not the truth, in such a case. But if you are in the light where he is, then of course, fellowship is possible. There must be conformity to him.

There must be an abandoning of all that is unlike him in you, at least a commitment in that area, in order to really fellowship with him. And so, that's because as I said, his thoughts are not our thoughts, our ways are not his ways. His are higher than ours, and we have to abandon ours.

Let the unrighteous man, or let the wicked man abandon his thoughts, and the unrighteous man his ways. Why? Because God's thoughts and God's ways are different than that of the unrighteous and the wicked. And a person must repent of sin, and must be committed to conformity to Christ.

I do not say that a high degree of conformity to Christ must have been achieved before fellowship with God of a satisfying sort can be enjoyed. I frankly think that none of us who are really pursuing God will ever feel that we've achieved a very high degree of conformity to Christ. If others look on and think we have, we know what they don't know about ourselves.

And we know the areas where we know that we have so much ground to take. And a person who is really pursuing God will never feel that he is completely like Christ. And if we were to say, well, I can't fellowship with God enjoyably or in a fulfilling way until I am just like Jesus, fully conformed, well, then we'd be out of luck, because we know that we're not fully conformed into his image.

But when we have made it our task to get off that road that we were on, and get on the road that is walking in the light, and to conform to Christ, conform to God, as dear children, be followers of God, Paul said in Ephesians 5.1, that we imitate him and we follow him. When we are on that path, the fellowship begins. As we progress on that path, it is my understanding from the limited experience I've had, that the fellowship is enriched the further you go toward conformity.

The more like him you are, the more points along which there are that the two can find in common. That's what fellowship is. Fellowship is common ground.

Fellowship is mutual participation, partnership. To the degree that we resemble Christ, we have that many more points of partnership or fellowship with him. So that Paul said that I might know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his death.

I can fellowship with Christ in his sufferings if I've been made conformable to his death. If I have not been made conformable to his death, perhaps there's still some degree of fellowship available with him, but it won't be a fellowship in his sufferings because we don't have anything in common in that area, he and I. It's obvious that if you've ever tried to get close to somebody who's gone through deep, deep grief, and you've never been through any deep, deep grief, it's very hard to really experience a sense that we're on the same page. We're on common ground here.

I mean, it's true, there is common ground if we're both Christians, but in terms of real interpersonal shared communion, it feels like there's a big gap there. And there is. I mean, if you and another person have been through a great number of mutual same experiences, you'll find immediately many things that you can hit it off and talk freely about, and you won't even have to explain them because you know that they've been there too, and they understand that too, and there's just an intimacy there, an instant intimacy of a sort.

And that is, of course, a prerequisite for fellowship with God, is there must be some conformity, some abandoning of the darkness where God isn't, and walking in the light where God is, because light and darkness cannot fellowship with each other. And if we remain in the darkness and say we have fellowship, we lie and do not the truth. So the more in the light we are, the more conformed to Christ we are, the more points at which it would seem our fellowship with God can be known and enjoyed.

Okay, let's move along now. I want to talk to you about, I guess, three concepts, and I'm going to give them in what strikes me as a logical order. All of them are brought up in the Bible that I feel are essential to the fellowship of the soul with God.

The first is drawing near to God. The second is dwelling with God. And the third is walking with God.

Companionship with God requires first that you approach, secondly that you remain, and thirdly that you keep up. You draw near to God, you dwell with God, and you walk with God. These are the three concepts that remain, and I would like to think I could talk about them all in this session, but that remains to be seen.

I'm a little wordy sometimes, and may not get anywhere near as far as I hope I might. Let's talk first of all about drawing near to God. There's a scripture in Psalm 27.

Psalm 27, verse 8, says, and David is praying, of course, he says, When you said, that's when God said to him, Seek my face. My heart said to you, Your face, Lord, I will seek. Now, God calls first, Seek my face.

My heart responds, OK, I'll do it. I will seek your face. But notice the next line in verse 9. Do not hide your face from me.

I'll seek it, but not if you're going to play hide and seek. I mean, don't hide from me, because I won't be able to find you. If I'm going to seek you, it must be that I'm convinced that such a seeking will not be an exercise in futility for me.

I will not have the motivation to seek God if it's going to be just a continuing frustration. It says that very thing, actually, in Hebrews chapter 11. And verse 6, a well-known verse, Hebrews 11, 6 says, But without faith it is impossible to please him.

For he who comes to God must believe, of course, as previously, must believe that he is, that is, that God exists, and that he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Those who come to God must first have a belief in place that, A, there is a God, obviously, and secondly, that that God can be found and will be found and will reward all efforts of diligence at seeking him. Will reward them with what? Well, with finding him, of course.

What other reward would a person seek who's seeking God but to find what he's seeking? The person who feels that seeking God will simply end up in frustration and that God will not welcome that person or that that person will not ever be able to find God, and this is especially possible if you've made half-hearted attempts to seek God and found nothing satisfying, then you may have concluded that God is not to be found by you. But the problem is, of course, perhaps the half-heartedness of earlier attempts. Because I am persuaded that nobody has sought the Lord with all their heart and failed to find him.

There's a promise, of course, in Jeremiah. What is it? Is it in Jeremiah 29, 13 or something like that? Is that where it is? You shall search for me and you shall find me when you shall seek me with all your heart. No half-hearted stuff works.

You've got to seek his face, and he will not hide his face from those who diligently seek him. Those who come to God must first believe that God is, and they must believe that God will reward those who diligently seek him with an audience, with finding him. That's what the reward is.

Now notice, this statement is made by the writer of Hebrews in the context of faith, as the whole chapter 11 is about faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. You can't approach God unless you have some basic faith in place.

You must believe. If you believe that God will not, or you suspect that God will not be found of you, you will not seek with all your heart. It's too costly.

There's too much vulnerability to seek with all your heart that which may not be found of you. So you must start with faith. You must believe what we've said already, that God desires fellowship with you, and that God will reward your attempts to draw near to him, to come to him.

And I'm not talking in terms of coming for salvation initially. Some of these verses sometimes are applied that way, and maybe that's how the writer expected them to be applied. But I see coming to God as a continual thing, not just something a sinner does at an altar call.

You come continually to God. When Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and life, no man comes to the Father but through me, we use that as an evangelistic text, saying that no one's really ever going to get to heaven except through Jesus, and therefore they have to give up their atheism or their Buddhism or their worldliness and come to Jesus, then they can be saved. Well, I suppose that's true.

I mean, I guess I understand it that way too. I always have. But it seems to me that Jesus is saying something much more, of more lasting benefit to those who know him.

He's speaking to his disciples who've already come to him. And he says, no one comes to the Father but through me. Our life is to be a continual coming to the Father, moment by moment, every day.

We come to the Father. We do so through Christ, that is, through the way that he is, the new and living way that he has opened to us. The writer of Hebrews uses that expression also.

If you look at Hebrews chapter 10, in Hebrews chapter 10, beginning of verse 19, the writer says, Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest, that means the holy of holies, by the blood of Jesus, you see, you can't come to the Father except through him, through his atoning work, his blood. But now we have boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way. Jesus is that way.

That's why it's a living way. He's alive. Which he consecrated for us through the veil, that is, his flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God.

Now that is a long clause, sort of a long, complex, subordinate clause. The actual sentence hasn't really begun yet. The core of what the writer is saying isn't said until verse 23.

But first of all, he starts out with saying, Having this in place and having that in place and having this also, then here's what I want to tell you to do. What we have in place is, first of all, boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus. We've got that in check.

What else? Well, we have a new and living way by which he's consecrated for us. That's there. That's in place.

And we have another thing already, the high priest over the house of God, upon whose merits and upon whose intercession that way remains open for us. Having all of this in place, what do we do? I said verse 23, but it's 22. Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Now, I suspect that this reference to having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water is an allusion to the tabernacle because in the previous chapter and even in this chapter, the tabernacle ritual is the framework for the whole discussion. And we said now we, and even in a sense, we enter into the holiest of all, the holy of holies, you know, that's the tabernacle. But of course he's made clear in chapter 9 that Jesus has entered into a different holiest of all, a different tabernacle, and he's talking about heaven.

And so we're now dealing with the spiritual antitype of the tabernacle, but he's still using the language of the tabernacle, and rightly so, the tabernacle is there for that very didactic purpose, to teach us the language and the concepts of doing this same thing spiritually. But he says we can draw near to God, we can come into the holiest of all, if we have our hearts sprinkled, and we know that that sprinkling is by the blood of Christ, we know it partly because he said that back in chapter 9, and verse 14, he said, The sprinkling is by the blood of Christ. In fact it says that in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 2 also, it says that we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

So that's 1 Peter 1, 2. But here in Hebrews it says, We have had our hearts sprinkled, that's by the blood of Christ, and our bodies washed with pure water, probably referring to baptism, although some people have other theories as to what he's referring to. But with reference to the tabernacle, those are the first two stages of entry toward God, of approaching God. You come into the outer court and you've got there the temple, the brazen altar where the blood sacrifice is made, where the animal is sacrificed, and the blood is sprinkled and so forth at the foot of the altar.

And then the next step was for the priest to go and wash himself at the labor of cleansing and then to enter in. And we're like priests, we have a high priest, but we are priests, we're a kingdom of priests. So we go and we have this blood sacrifice, which of course corresponds to that which Jesus has done for us.

Our hearts are sprinkled by the blood, and then we wash the flesh with water as the priest washed at the labor, and probably has to do with us having been baptized, as all Christians in the New Testament were baptized. And then we enter the building. And then we go into the holy place and then into the holiest of all.

Now, notice we are exhorted to draw near to God. But we need a true heart, and we need to be cleansed. Now this is something that is made very clear also by James, and both James and Hebrews, I think, allude back to some things in the Old Testament that we'll take a look at in a moment.

But in James chapter 4 and verse 8, it says, Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. You double-minded, there it is again, the sprinkling, and the heart sprinkled from an evil conscience by the blood of Christ.

Here you purify your hearts. And you cleanse your hands. That's what the priest did at the labor of cleansing.

Now, I personally believe James is alluding here to Psalm 24, verses 3 and 4. Psalm 24, verses 3 and 4 says, Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place? He that has clean hands and a pure heart. To ascend is to draw near. To stand is to dwell there.

To draw near to God and to dwell with Him requires these two things. Psalm 24, verse 3, Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart. And it goes on, there's other things too, but those are the first two.

Clean hands, pure heart, to ascend to God's dwelling place and to draw near to Him. James says, cleanse your hands. He says, purify your hearts.

You double-minded. What's interesting is that the purifying of the heart that James mentions, is not such as we might suppose. You might suppose that your heart is made dirty by sin.

I suppose that would be correct. It is made dirty by sin. But the cleansing of the heart is not done by resolve to stop sinning.

Now, repentance is to change your mind about sinning, therefore you want to stop sinning, and that is what you fully intend to do. But you cannot, by just tightening your belt or whatever, gritting your teeth and biting the bullet or whatever, you cannot cleanse your heart by simply putting yourself under self-restraint. Paul talked about those rules, touch not, taste not, handle not, which are of no good to the overcoming of the carnal desires of the flesh, in Colossians 2. But what is the purifying of the heart? Well, James says, purify your heart, you double-minded.

Well, what is double-minded? Well, James is, as far as I know, the only other biblical writer to use that term, but fortunately he used it earlier in a way that eliminates any question as to what he means by it. Because he says, in verse 6, of the man who lacks wisdom and should ask for it, he says, let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind, for let not that man suppose that he'll receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

A double-minded man is a man who doesn't fully believe, he's got doubts. He asks with some measure of faith, but he's got doubts assailing him as well. He's of two minds.

At one point, he's thinking God's faithful. At another point, he's not so sure God is faithful. His faith is tentative.

He does not have a decided and committed and founded faith. That is the double-minded man. So, in James, then, it turns in chapter 4 to his audience, it says, purify your heart, you double-minded.

It would appear that what you're purifying your heart of is the doubts. That you come without doubt, or as the writer of Hebrews says, let us draw near with full assurance of faith. The cleansing of the heart is not something we are capable of doing ourselves, which is why I believe justification must be by faith.

Our hearts are cleansed by the decree of God in justification, and that decree is in response to our full, total commitment of faith to God. And when we have such a faith and we put our whole trust in him, the heart is cleansed, sprinkled from an evil conscience by the blood of Christ. So, James says, we must have clean hands and a pure heart.

The pure heart is achieved through faith. The clean hands, well, it has to do with what you do. You know, it says in Psalms, is it 37, I think it is, 37.3 or 4? It says, trust in the Lord and do good.

Is that the verse I'm thinking of? Let me just get the reference here. Yeah, it is. It's Psalm 37.3. Trust in the Lord and do good.

There you go. Trust in the Lord for your justification and do good. Now, that's having pure heart and clean hands.

And to ascend to the hill of the Lord and to dwell in his holy place, to come before God, to present yourself to God, requires such. It requires that we trust him for our cleansing. You know, a person will never have fellowship with God as long as his conscience is afflicted by guilt of sins real or imagined.

You know, real sins produce real guilt. Imagined sins produce a sense of guilt that is every bit as crippling as real guilt is. Guilt is only a problem to us when we're aware of it, usually.

I mean, psychologically it's a problem when we're aware of it. I guess it could still hinder us between us and God, whether we knew of it or not. But when we're aware of it, that's what hinders us from having confidence to approach God.

It says in 1 John 3, if our hearts condemn us, 1 John 3, 20, if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. And whatever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing to his sight.

Well, that's why our heart doesn't condemn us, because we keep his commandments. We do those things that are pleasing to his sight. And we know that where we do fail and where our heart does condemn us, God is greater than our heart and he's able to forgive.

He's able to cover by what he has accomplished through Christ. So our trust must be in God that if we have done all that he's asked in terms of repenting, you know, of our sins or whatever, that we can come before God. And he welcomes us and wants us to.

Look at 1 John again. I told you that 1 John chapter 1 is, to my mind, the premier chapter on fellowship with God. I think given the number of verses and the density of the references to fellowship with God, we would have to say there's no other chapter in the Bible that makes reference to it quite so frequently.

But remember he said in verse 6, if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we're lying. But verse 7, if we walk in the light, we do have fellowship with him. We have fellowship with one another in the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanses us from all sin.

This requires, of course, walking in the light. What is that? What is walking in the light? Well, before we read on in 1 John, which in measure answers that question, let me give you the background for, I think, what John is saying in John chapter 3. In John chapter 3, verses 19 through 21, Jesus said, And this is the condemnation. Remember, if our hearts condemn us, we're not really as bold toward God as otherwise.

Well, where does condemnation come? Well, this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light. They'd rather not walk in the light. They'd rather stay in the darkness.

Why? Because their deeds were evil. For everyone who practices evil hates the light, does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. A person who loves his sin or is committed to his sin and does not wish to be cleansed of sin, that person would just as soon remain unexposed.

And light, if it does anything, it exposes things. And therefore, that person who does not love the light and loves the darkness will not walk in the light and will not fellowship with God, will not come to the light. And that is their condemnation.

But verse 21 says, But he who does the truth, and by doing the truth, that's a strange expression, but it's found frequently in John, doing truth. You know, we usually think of believing the truth or speaking the truth, but doing truth? I know people do lunch, but do they do truth? How do you do truth? Well, I think that what is being stated here is that the truth, as God has revealed it in Christ, is not simply something to know, but to act upon and to live according to. And among other things, the truth speaks of an innate integrity in the person who's committed to truth.

If you're committed to truth, it doesn't only mean that you're living according to whatever truth God has said. You're also truthful yourself. You're honest.

You're not hiding anything. You're walking according to truth. Truth is now your master in one sense, since Jesus is the truth.

And therefore, you live in truth. You don't conceal things. You come to the light.

You're transparent. The one who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. Now, coming to God, approaching God, drawing near to God, requires that we come out of darkness into light.

And many people never come to God because their deeds are evil. They just assume, keep it that way, but keep them secret. But the person who's committed to the truth, that person will come out of the darkness, will come into the light, does not object to having his deeds exposed.

And that is, I believe, what John is talking about when he says in 1 John 1, 7, if we walk in the light, that is, we're not walking in darkness. Walking in the light would be to walk in a state of transparency, not in all respects. I mean, transparency can be overdone.

People can be guilty of poor taste and poor judgment in confessing publicly things that would just as well not be talked about publicly. Transparency can be a false god, that people, you know, they trust in their transparency more than they trust in anything else for their righteousness. I know myself, although I don't think I was guilty of any excess in this, but I know that early in my ministry, when I would hear scandalous things about other ministers, I would think, you know, it's a scandalous thing that that minister did what he did and that he was caught, but what's more scandalous is that he was exposed and then had to come clean.

If he had only come clean first, it would have been less embarrassing. And I decided maybe for self-serving reasons, I don't know, but I just decided I always want to be honest about my warts and my sins and my flaws. I wasn't, sometimes in my youth, probably was more transparent than I should be.

In fact, I confessed some things from the pulpit that some people told me afterwards. I was 16, 17. Some people told me afterwards that I was not in good taste in the audience, with that audience, you know.

So, you know, you'll live and learn. But I always thought this, that if there are sins in my life, I'd just assume people found out about it from me instead of through the grapevine, you know. If there's something embarrassing I've done or that might ever be found out, I would just assume that if you heard gossip about it, you'd say, oh yeah, he told me about that.

Someone says, do you know that Steve did such and such? You'd say, oh yeah, he told us about that right from the pulpit. He mentioned it on the radio, you know. Somehow it makes an embarrassing thing.

Well, I mean, we shouldn't take the embarrassment and shame out of a shameful act. But once it's been confessed, once it's been cleared before God, it can remain, you know, something with which a person can be emotionally blackmailed. Because some scandalous acts, I remember one scandalous, well, I'm not going to get into that right now.

Well, let me just say this. Walking in the light makes you never vulnerable to exposure because you are exposing yourself. Now, again, I think taste and wisdom and so forth need to govern the degree to which you make yourself transparent in what audiences and so forth.

I remember when I was young and there was, in the Jesus movement, there was a large number of hippies who were recently saved and had very little moral judgment or wisdom. You know, women coming for counsel to men, including to me, and talking about their sexual problems and sexual failures and so forth. And I did not find that helpful to me to hear about.

And it seemed to me that it probably wasn't very helpful to them either to talk to me about it. But there are places and there are audiences that are appropriate to hear such things. And there are situations where it probably is best to keep not so much secret, but just kept, which I would say confidential, until the right time or place is to bring it up.

But John goes on when he says that we should walk in the light, he gives example of what it means to walk in the light or not. In verse 8, 1 John 1.8, if we say we have no sin, well, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We're not walking in the truth.

We're not doing the truth if we're claiming to have no sin. If we confess our sins, now that's walking in the light. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

It's clear that confessing our sins in verse 9 is parallel to walking in the light in verse 7, because both of them are said to result in our cleansing by the blood of Christ. Verse 7 says if we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. Verse 9 says if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Confession of sin is one aspect of walking in the light. Certainly it's not all there is to it, but it is a notable example of being honest, of being transparent, of being willing to have one's deeds brought to the light. Confession of sin.

Confession of sin is humiliating or humbling. And that's why many people don't do it. That's why some people prefer to just stay in the dark and let their deeds not be exposed.

But to practice self-exposure, that's a bad word these days, but let's just say disclosure. Let's say full disclosure. That's better than exposure.

That would be a notable example. That would be confessing your sins, confessing your faults. James says confess your faults one to another and especially to God, of course.

And it says if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his words not in us. So walking in the light requires that we not be secretive about our weaknesses. There are times when it would be inappropriate to talk about them, but it should be that if there are weaknesses and sins, we should not allow ourselves to be thought of more highly than we ought.

We're not walking in the light in a case like that. So to keep your hands clean and your heart pure, to draw near to God, requires that you come to the light, you come by faith, you come through the new and living way that's provided through Christ. No one comes to the Father but through him, but there's more.

Drawing near to God is, I think, symbolically described probably also in terms of the tabernacle or maybe in some slightly different paradigm here in Psalm 100, a well-known psalm. Make a joyful noise to the Lord all ye lands, serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing.

Know that the Lord, he is God, it is he who has made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.

Be thankful to him and bless his name, for the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endures to all generations. There is reference here to coming before the Lord, come before his presence with singing. Verse 4, enter into his gates and into his courts.

Now to enter into the courts of the tabernacle, one had to come through an opening which was called the gate of the tabernacle. And it's very possible that David here, although it doesn't say that David is the writer of this psalm, he may not be, but the writer is thinking in terms of coming before God, coming into his presence. And you enter the tabernacle.

If you're a Jew living in the Old Testament, to come before God's presence, you enter through the gate and into the courts. You draw near to God in this way. And he says we enter his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.

Now it's possible that all that the psalmist is saying is, as you come to the tabernacle, sing. As you come through the gates, thank God. As you come into his courts, praise him.

In other words, as you are doing the normal ritual of the tabernacle, bring a light and happy and rejoicing heart and sing and praise God and thank him as you enter his gates and courts and so forth. It is also possible, though, that in terms of entering before God in the spiritual sense, that the very entry into his gates is through a medium of thanksgiving and praise. Now I don't mean to say that we are saved or made acceptable to God by thanksgiving and praise.

The opposite is true. It's nothing we do in that sense that commends us to God. But rather, in terms of fellowship with God, if I wish to come close to God right now, if I want to spend some time with the Lord and draw near to him in a time of quiet solitude, as I thank him, as I praise him, it elevates my mind.

It elevates my heart. It brings me, in a sense, consciously more into his presence, coming through the gates and into the courts to approach God. Thanksgiving and praise, I consider to be different from one another.

I've always thought this and I think it's true. I don't know if I can prove it lexically and I've never heard anyone dispute what I said, but I guess if someone wanted to hang a lot on what I'm about to say, they probably have to do their own study about this. But it seems to me that thanksgiving and praise have a kind of a key difference from one another, although they're often linked, obviously, and for good reason they're linked.

But they're different in their essential nature, it seems to me, that thanksgiving is, of course, by nature, thanking. Thanking God for something. Generally speaking, for something tangible or something providential or some blessing.

You thank him for deliverance out of a bad situation. You thank him for answering your prayers. You thank him for your salvation.

You thank him for your food. You thank him for the peace and security that we enjoy. You thank him for things.

But all of these things are simply blessings from the hand of God. When you thank somebody, it is usually because you're thanking them for a gift or for an act of generosity in particular. Whereas praise, if I do not misunderstand it, has more to do with speaking about the person himself rather than the gift from the person.

If you would come to my rescue, there's an example. When I was waiting to see if money would come in to start our radio program, a man called me from Salem, asked if he could come over to my house, he did. And he gave me $500, which is not the largest gift I received by any means, but it was a large gift to him.

He said he'd been saving up for three years for something he wanted. And he had decided that when he heard that I was considering a radio program, and he's a very enthusiastic supporter of my ministry, not always financially, never financially in that magnitude, but he said it just was a clear choice to him. He said he had on one hand this thing, which he said was just for his own enjoyment, and then there was this other thing which he felt was to the advantage of the kingdom of God, so he came and brought his gift.

It was not a real small gift, and it wasn't the largest gift we received. But to him it was a very large gift, a little bit like the widow's two mites, I think, because he'd been saving for something that he'd had his heart set on, and he decided that he'd either put that off for another three years or go without it altogether. And, you know, on one hand I could say, well, thank you for the money, and send him a thank you note for the gift like we do to everybody, whether they send a dollar or $100 or a million dollars, we just send them a thank you and a receipt.

But that is to show gratitude. To not thank is to be guilty of ingratitude. But there's more when it comes to praising.

I mean, to say, you know, this gift, I recognize this was a very sacrificial gift for you. I mean, I am truly impressed. I am truly appreciative of your generosity and of your commitment to the Lord and so forth, and of your friendship.

I mean, I'm talking in this case not about a specific act, but about something in the person. And thanksgiving is to thank for a particular item. Praise is to address something in the character and nature of the person himself.

To say thank you for the gift is thanksgiving. To say that you are very generous is praise. Now, you might say, well, that's taking a long time to talk about this hairline distinction.

What's the difference? Well, the difference is that anybody, even people who don't know God very well, can thank God. Some do. I mean, if someone wanted to play golf today and they were afraid there was going to be an ice storm, and there wasn't, and it was sunny instead, they would say thank God.

The sun's shining. A person might say that if they don't even hardly know who God is. And they might even say it without any genuine gratitude at all.

It's just almost, it comes from about the same level of intelligence as when they curse God on other occasions, and use his name in vain. But the fact of the matter is anyone can be thankful momentarily for a gift, for a benefit received from somebody, even if it's somebody you have no relationship with. If it's somebody you barely ever see or don't know very well at all, you can always be glad that they did something for you.

You can always say thank you for that. But a person can thank God without knowing God well enough to praise him. To praise God requires that you know something about his character, and that there's something about him himself that you are in touch with, that you're aware of, and that you appreciate, and that you're talking about it to him.

Now, by the way, I think thanksgiving and praise may be almost identical, and may be almost equal, but if there's any hairline difference, I think praise is just a notch above thanksgiving in terms of an expression of intimacy, an expression of personal appreciation. I don't want to make more of this than is legitimate. I don't know how much difference the Bible would make in these two words, but it strikes me that to come before God's presence, to come into his gates, we thank him.

Into his courts, we praise him. And thanksgiving is something which is not really a great... nothing for which we should be commended if we are thankful. You know the story of the ten lepers that Jesus healed, and they were on their way and they found themselves healed, and one came back and thanked him.

When I was a kid, I always thought, boy, that's really neat, that guy. He could have gone to the temple with the rest of them, and he could have gotten returned to his family with the rest of them, and boy, that was really neat that that guy went back to thank Jesus. In contrast to those other guys, he was really a good... you know, he really did the right thing.

He really was great. But when he came back to Jesus, Jesus didn't say, boy, I just think that's great that you came back to thank me. I'm just really impressed by you.

He said, where are the other nine? Why did only one come back to thank you? You know, where are the others? Don't I... shouldn't I be thanked by all ten? It's not like Jesus thought this man was doing an exceptional act. He thought that those who failed to come back were doing something less than decent. And it says, you know, interestingly, in Romans chapter 1, as Paul there describes the downward moral spiral of those to whom God has revealed himself, but who do not like to retain the knowledge of God, and therefore get turned over to various things by God.

It's interesting that it says one of their first mistakes was this. In verse 21, because they knew God, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were they thankful. But they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

You can't walk in the light if your heart is darkened. But their first mistake, besides, you know, knowing God and not glorifying him, was that they weren't thankful. To be unthankful is to behave as a person who is spoiled.

And a child who is spoiled is very repugnant, repulsive. And you can always tell a child is spoiled because they have no capacity for thankfulness anymore. They believe that whatever they get they deserve, and more.

And that is the mark of a spoiled brat. And that's what many of us perhaps are in danger of being, or are already there as Christians, that God has given us so many things we have come to think we deserve them. I've had good health so long that if God would strike me with cancer, everyone would say, why him? Why did God do that to him? God, explain yourself.

How dare you strike down a man of God with cancer? Well, I'd say, why not me? Why haven't I been, why have I been well all this time? That's the hard thing to understand. You know, to be thankful for things that we take for granted is a step toward having a walk of fellowship with God. You enter into his gates with thanksgiving.

I remember watching the movie Awakenings, how this young boy was taken ill with a strange malady and paralyzed and so forth. And later, once he was an adult and all, if you've seen the movie you know the story, his mother is talking about how when her child was born, perfect and healthy when he was first born, she never said, why was I given this perfect child? Why is this child in good health like this? But she says, when my child got sick, you bet, I said, why did this happen to me? You know, and she didn't say anything about it that linked this to a Christian concept. But to my mind, that is so, so obviously the attitude of a person who knows the Lord is not, why did something bad happen to me? Why hasn't more bad happening to me? When I know that bad things happen to people all around me, why is God sparing me? Why has God given me these good things? And to be thankful always for the littlest things is not just a platitude, it's simply appropriate.

It's appropriate as, for one thing, it's a spiritual therapeutic. A person who is not thankful has seemingly one other alternative, and that is to grow more presumptuous, to grow more spoiled, to grow more bitter, and bitter when not all things they think they should have coming to them come. I don't think you can remain static.

You either give thanks where thanks is due, or else you just become more convinced that you deserve everything you have, and really everyone ought to cater to you, and then you become more susceptible to grumbling and murmuring and bitterness and resentment when not everything does go your way, and alienation from God. But thankfulness draws you near to God. And praise, of course, does so as well.

To praise God at times when His goodness and His sovereignty are not quite as evident in our lives. To praise Him when the things we know to be true about Him are not manifest in His sovereign dealings with us, when things that we thought He should do for us don't happen, and when things that we can't understand why they happen to us do, and we say, well, is God still on the throne? We don't say that really, but those are the questions that must be addressed. Is God still sovereign? Is God still caring for me? Does He still number the hairs on my head? Is He on my side or not? I mean, is He a good God? And we know very well that there are people who wonder those things, only when disaster strikes.

They don't think much about God at other times, but when disaster strikes, you bet they think about God, but not good thoughts of God, but hard thoughts of God. And the person who is in fellowship with God and remains in fellowship with God is a person who knows how to praise God in all things. Now, let me clarify something.

A few years ago, I guess I'm older than I thought, it's a few decades ago now, there were three books that came out by one author named Merlin Carothers. The first was called Prison to Praise, and then there was Answers to Praise, and Power in Praise, I think it was. And the first book was just the testimony of the author, which was very inspiring about how he'd been delivered out of prison and over a life of, I think he was in military prison, as I recall.

It's been many, many years since I read it. But how that God taught him how to be a happy Christian, and basically the message was all things work together for good to those who love God, and therefore there's reason to thank God in everything and to praise God in everything. And the book had testimonies of how he had learned to thank God for problems, and after he began to praise God for the problems, went away.

And as I recall, it's a fading memory now, but as I recall, one of the theses of the book is that God allows trials to come to you in order that you might learn the lesson of praising him in trials, and once you've learned the lesson and you're praising him, then the trial's no longer needed and God withdraws it. Well, as you might anticipate, that message, which has some good features to it, mixed with the carnality of Christians who read the book, was translated into a way of manipulating God. Okay, God gave me this trial so I could learn to praise him.

If I praise him, it'll go away. What do you do next? You praise God in it. Whether you have any awareness, whether you have any real relationship with God or not, it becomes a formula.

It becomes a hocus-pocus kind of thing. Praise God. Thank you, God, for this trial.

But all the while, it's like giving because you expect a hundredfold return. It's not giving expecting nothing in return, like Jesus said. It's not offering praise because you really love God and because you really know that God is good in this matter and that regardless of appearances, everything God is doing is consistent with his faithfulness, his justice, his mercy, and his goodness.

That's where real praise of any value comes from, is that you are confident in God's character and not dependent on the look of the circumstances to convince you that God is a good God. You can praise him for his justice, for his mercy, for all those things in him that are always in him even when there's very little to thank him about. I mean, you can always thank him when you get a check in the mail.

But when you get a bill in the mail and don't have a check to pay the bill, then there's not obviously something to thank him about. You might think of something else. You might think, well, thank God I'm not a quadriplegic.

You can always find something to thank God about. But when the dominating circumstance presenting itself to you is not something which would elicit immediate thanksgiving, because it's not something you want, it is still possible for those who know God to praise God for who he is in the midst of it. Not because once we do that we figure he can now lift the trial.

There can be no manipulation in it. John Erickson taught us, she seems to live a life of praising God. I've heard her praise God a great deal for her circumstance.

But I don't think she expects ever to be out of it. I don't think she's thinking, well, if I just say praise God enough times, eventually I'm going to be out of this wheelchair. I don't think that's ever seriously crossed her mind as a motive for praising God.

And I don't know John Erickson taught us, so I don't know what all goes through her mind. But from what she says, I would assume that she praises God because she loves him, and she has no doubts that God, whatever he may do, is working. He's on our side.

He's doing something for the benefit of those who love him. And to be able to praise God at those times bespeaks a great trust. It's as if a woman knows her husband to be faithful, but some series of circumstances points in the direction of suspicion about him and his secretary, let's say.

And there's testimony against him. And someone saw him getting into a car with her on a certain occasion, and his story of where he went can't be corroborated and so forth. And there's all these people suspicious, and they're telling his wife, you know, you're crazy to believe him.

He can't be faithful to you, and there's all these evidences against him. But she knows her husband, and she knows, I'm sorry, I still believe he's faithful. And, you know, if he is faithful, in fact, that is high praise.

That bespeaks intimate knowledge. When a person against all evidence is to the contrary, in all accusations to the contrary, knows the integrity of a person with whom they are acquainted. And it's likewise with God.

Whenever it says, how can you praise God at times like this, you say, well, why not? I mean, he's no different than he was at other times. God doesn't change. Times change, but God doesn't change.

If there was ever any reason to praise him in good times, there's nothing about him that's changed when the times change. If he's worthy of praise at one time, he's as worthy of it at any other time. And, you know, people may think God is governing the universe poorly, but I happen to know him well enough to know that he doesn't make any mistakes, and he does all things well, and that I can praise him sincerely, even in bad times.

Because, really, times do change. God doesn't change, so he can be praised at all times. Now, praise and thanksgiving, then, are part of drawing near to God.

Drawing near. There is one other aspect I want to bring up, and I can see immediately, I'm not going to get to some of my other points today, so we're going to have to move along, take this series a little longer than I hope. But there is another aspect of drawing near to God.

Let me turn your attention to a psalm, Psalm 37, and verse 7. Psalm 37, 7. It says, Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. There's more to that verse, but we don't have to read further. I mean, it makes a special application of that general principle, to rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him.

Waiting on God, waiting for God, is sometimes a requirement in drawing near to God. You can't just say, Okay, I'm going to have a real quick five minutes with God today, I've got a little extra time, so I just go into my routine, I start thanking God, start praising God, start trying to image God or something, and try to draw near to God that way, but God doesn't show up. And sometimes you even give more than five minutes, sometimes you give six, and maybe six and a half.

And if he doesn't come by seven, well, I'm just going to figure he's not available today. That's not the way of God. We don't snap our fingers, we don't rub a bottle, and he appears.

And he is often, it's not so much that he's inaccessible, I think often he's waiting for our hearts to be brought into a state amenable with him, a state suitable for communion with him. If we're hurrying about and thinking about all kinds of other things, and we've got a few minutes here, we decide to spend a few minutes with God, our hearts might not be quiet enough to hear from God, our thoughts might not be focused enough in a few minutes' time. Sometimes he just waits and expects us to wait until all the dust settles or whatever.

And there are times when we must just wait patiently for him in drawing near to God. David said that in Psalm 40, in verse 1, I waited patiently for the Lord. There are many references in the Scriptures to waiting on God.

Andrew Murray has a book, my favorite of his, called Waiting on God. It's like 30 or so devotionals, each based on one of the Bible verses that says something about waiting on God. I really found the book very edifying.

Some of our students are reading it or have read it. But there are many verses that can be used if one wishes to study out what the Bible has to say about waiting on God. Here's one, Lamentations 3.26. Lamentations, that's right after Jeremiah and before Ezekiel, just a few chapters long.

4.26 says, It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Now, waiting on God doesn't simply mean, in a prayer time, waiting for God to show up for fellowship with him. Biblically, waiting on God, I think, simply means kind of leaving things to God's time.

You pray for something, and you keep praying for it, and you keep hoping in God, and you keep from getting anxious about it, and you wait quietly about it in your heart, and rest in the Lord, and so forth, and eventually, in his time, he does what he's going to do. And it's your part just to wait. But this applies also to meeting with God, to conversing and communing with God.

As I said earlier, it may be that you need to spend somewhat lengthy periods in solitude and quiet to commune with God, which is not to say you can't commune with him also in rush hour traffic, but rather, it does mean that you must at times be still. Your heart must be still. Your heart must be focused, it seems to me, to have any kind of meaningful fellowship with God.

If my wife is talking to me, and I'm doing something else at the same time, that doesn't count, as far as she's concerned. She likes to have a certain amount of time to catch me up on what's been going on during the day, and what concerns she has, and so forth. So I say, OK.

Basically, I've committed to give an hour every evening to her. She doesn't always require that long, but I've decided to set aside an hour for her to just talk and fill me in on things. But it doesn't count if during that hour I'm also organizing my desk, or building the fire in the fireplace, or doing anything else where my attention is not focused.

And I don't know if she's unusual that way. I don't think so. I think most wives, probably most husbands are that way too.

If I'm trying to tell my wife something important, and she's busy about something else about which she has to give some attention, I just didn't wait until she finished with that and say, OK, now can you listen to me? And we expect God to commune with us, but we want Him to do it on our schedule, between our activities, maybe while we're doing something else. And He can do that. I'm not saying you'll never hear from God when you're doing something else.

As a matter of fact, I've heard from God in important ways when I was doing something else, not expecting to hear from Him. He knows my number. He knows where to find me.

But if I want to find Him, that's another story. He can find me any time He wants to. He found Saul of Tarsus.

Saul wasn't really looking for Him at that moment. He was looking for Christians. He wasn't looking for God.

And God knew where He was and how to reach Him. But the question is, do we know how to reach God and where He is? And at times, we may wish we could, but we are not willing to wait, to wait quietly and be still before the Lord. It's in Psalm 46.10. It says, Be still and know that I'm God.

It's a well-known verse. Now, I can go this far today. We only have about 10 minutes.

Or 15 or something like that. Look at what we've got. Can't quite see the clock there.

What? 19. Drawing near to God is simply a prerequisite to dwelling with God, that is, living with God, in His presence. And many of the same things that are true of drawing near to God are true of dwelling with God.

For example, we already saw in Psalm 24, verses 3 and 4, Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord. That's approaching. That's drawing near.

Who may stand in His holy place is staying there. Who is dwelling there in the presence of God? The answer was that He that has clean hands and a pure heart. So, obviously, not only do we have to have clean hands in terms of our actions are not morally reprehensible, are not displeasing to God, but we also, not only to approach God, but to dwell with Him.

Fellowship with God is greatly interrupted and impaired by sin, by sinful thoughts, by sinful motives, or by sinful actions. Any of these things can definitely break the communion. Now, they don't break your relationship with God, as far as I understand it.

I believe that a Christian who sins does not automatically cease to be a Christian at that moment, or that they cease to be a son, though they may be even temporarily prodigal. But the prodigal son, though he was still a son, he was not in fellowship with his father when he was with his friends or with the pigs. And there is a sense in which even if a person is still a Christian and living in a way that does not please God, it may be granted in some cases that such a person might yet be a Christian.

Again, I leave that to God to judge. Only He knows. But even if that person is judged to be a Christian, it is a given they are not in fellowship with God.

They are not communing with God, in other words, when they are in sin. Clean hands and pure heart are necessary to remain in the place of communion with God. Look at Psalm 15.

This is fairly well known also. A more elaborate answer to the same question. The question that was asked in Psalm 24 is who can ascend to the hill of the Lord, who can stand in His holy place.

And there is a relatively short answer. But the same question is asked and given a longer answer. In chapter 15 of the Psalms, a short psalm, it says, Who may abide in your tabernacle? Who may dwell in your holy hill? Now here we do not have the question about ascending and drawing near.

We just have the abiding part, dwelling there. Dwelling with God, abiding with God. Who can do that? Well, the answer is given for the remainder of the chapter.

He who walks uprightly and works righteousness and speaks the truth in his heart, he who does not backbite with his tongue, that's gossip, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor does he take up a reproach against a friend, similar to gossip, in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but he honors those who fear the Lord. A person who fears the Lord obviously hates evil because the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. It says in Proverbs 8, 13, and therefore evil people are not respected by one who fears the Lord, but those who do fear the Lord are respected and honored by that person.

He who swears to his own hurt and does not change, that is, he's a man of seamless integrity. He makes a promise, later discovers how costly that promise would be to keep, and doesn't bat an eye, just keeps the promise anyway, pays the extra price that he was not anticipating. That's faithfulness.

That's integrity, and that's something that God is holding out for in people that want to dwell in his presence. That kind of integrity, walking in truth. He who does not put out his money at usury.

Now, in modern English we use the word usury for excessive interest. You know, when you lend money and you have this really, really high rate of interest, but you take advantage of the poor man who's going to die without the loan, and you just put this really high price tag on the loan. That's what we call usury.

I think usury is even illegal, I don't know, by that definition. But actually, from what I understand, the word usury as used in Scripture is just another word for interest. It just is synonymous with interest.

Is that right? Do you know if that's right? Sure, that's true, isn't it? And therefore not putting out his money at interest, and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved. I might make a comment about putting out money at interest.

There are different opinions about this. I've known some Christians who would not ever put their money in the bank, because they knew that if their money was in the bank, the bank makes its living by putting out money at interest, and it's going to be their money that's on deposit that the bank will put out at interest. And therefore they felt that even using the banking system at all was a violation of this.

I've met at least two people who felt that way and did not use banks. There are others who feel that that is not necessarily the same thing, and the reason they give is that in biblical times, loans were usually granted to the poor. They needed loans, because they were poor.

They needed money to survive. And so a loan to the poor was something that was an act of benevolence. And if you, however, turned an act of benevolence into a profit venture, taking advantage of the man when he was down, he had to get the money from somewhere, and if you put steep charges on it, well, what can he do but accept? He needs the money.

He's going to die. His family is going hungry. And therefore it was forbidden to charge interest, at least of your brethren, when you gave loans.

And it is said sometimes that that's not parallel to modern banking economy, because banks usually give out loans not to people who are poor, but to people, in fact, they won't give you a loan if you're poor. If you don't have enough income to repay it, and if they're not convinced that you can repay it with interest quite faithfully and quite easily, and not even pinch you much financially. If you've got enough other debts that they're afraid that you'd be a little pressured not to pay back, they won't give you any money.

They lend to the rich. They lend commercially. People who already have resources.

They're not hungry. They're not starving. But they want to expand their business.

They want to buy new equipment or something like that, or people want to get a better car, although they're not starving to death, and they might even have a car that works quite adequately, but they want a new car or a new house. And they borrow money for these things. And some say this is a very different situation than that which the Bible pictures about lending for interest, that if a person is going to, for seemingly reasons of self-enrichment, from a state of security already to a point of greater prosperity, and they want to use your money, and then if you charge them for the use of your money, then that's not the same thing as exploiting the poor, as the loans in the Bible were pictured to be.

You can make up your own mind about these things. But at any rate, it's clear that the one who would dwell in God's place has an upright walk, righteous works, truthful speech, does not get involved in gossip and backbiting, does not respect, certainly does not idolize evil people. Boy, there are so many Christians who idolize musicians or actors or celebrities or rich, famous, successful people, but those people are clearly vile, and they know that, but they still kind of secretly admire them.

That's not a heart that fears God. A heart that fears God honors those who fear the Lord. A person who speaks, even makes commitments that will hurt him to keep, but keeps them anyway, and even it affects the way he handles his money.

All of these very down-to-earth things, the way you talk, the way you handle your money, who you respect, all of these things are part of the picture of the character of the person who maintains a life in the presence of God, in fellowship with him who dwells by God. Jesus spoke of this, of dwelling with the Lord. In John chapter 14, and we'll have to just take this as our last point in this session, I think, even though there are some minutes I will not be able to broach the last point I wanted to cover, which is walking with God.

It's too much there. But we will take it next time. In John chapter 14, in verse 23, Jesus answered and said to him, that is to Judas, not Iscariot, who had asked him a question, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

We will make our home with him. The Father and I will come and dwell with him, in other words. Now, this is not a promise made to all human beings, but to those who fit a certain description.

Those who love him, and show it by keeping his word. Those, in other words, who are his disciples, because elsewhere he said, If you continue my words, then you are my disciples, indeed. In John 8, verse 31.

So, to his disciples, who love him and to keep his word, he comes and dwells with them. It's not as if you must ascend into heaven, you can't do that. God will descend to where you are.

We will come and make our home with him. God is not inaccessible. The pagan gods dwelt, at least the Greeks thought, on Mount Olympus, a high and inaccessible mountain.

No one really could ever meet them. No one could ever really hope to see them, or commune with them. But the God of the Bible is a humble God.

He's a humble God. He comes down. He associates with the lowly.

In fact, he says, To this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word. God is not, in another place, in, let me think where this is, it's in Isaiah, Isaiah what? Isaiah 57, verse 15. It says, For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place with him also who has a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

God dwells, he says, in the high and holy place. Sounds very inaccessible. But he doesn't only dwell there, he also dwells, he says, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit.

A person who is lowly. The other verse about trembling at his word is found in Isaiah 66 too. To this one will I look on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my word.

God dwells with those who are humble. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. We are told more than once in Scripture.

So to fellowship with God requires that we maintain a walk that qualifies really to draw near to him and to dwell with him. That walk is described in some of those psalms we read. It may require that we wait on God because we may not find that he is found of us instantaneously.

There may be something in our heart, some degree of focus or something that he is waiting to occur before he shows up. I also want to say this, that communion with God doesn't mean that you have a way of inducing him to speak to you. There is not some set of procedures that if you jump through this hoop, this one, this one, this one, you are going to get a word from the Lord.

Communion with God isn't always in words. Sometimes it's just the sense of his comforting presence or his assurance and so forth that is not really expressed in a word from the Lord to you. It's just his presence.

There are perhaps people that even if you don't speak with them, if you are just in their presence, you feel more confident, you feel more reassured, you feel loved. And communion with God isn't only in terms of talking. Some of us talk, talk, talk so much that we can't imagine enjoying the company of someone if someone is not talking, especially us, or then talking to us.

But really just to be in the presence and to bask in the presence and to enjoy the presence of God is the foundation of fellowship with God. To communicate with him is an additional part of communing with him and for him to communicate with you. When we come to our next class, I want to talk about walking with God.

I was actually hoping to cover that in this one because I wanted to take as a separate though related topic, divine guidance, knowing God's voice, knowing his will. To my mind it's connected with walking with God. When you walk, you're going somewhere, you're in motion, but you must know where you're going, you must know which steps to take and which turns to make.

There must be some direction, there must be some directing influence if you're walking. And walking with God requires that you have his guidance in order to keep step with him, where he is and where he wants you to be. And so I thought we would introduce walking with God as a subject in this class and then talk specifically about guidance in the next.

But it looks like we won't be able to do that with the time that we have and so we will try to cover both in the next session if we can.