Northside Church - Sydney
Success or Significance? Week 4: The X Factor
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. So I was wondering if you guys have ever been cruising down George Street. If you haven't, you could get there on a Friday or a Saturday night between the hours of 10 about 2 a.m. and picture this scene, you're going to see a wonderful array of modified Japanese cars or have tricked up Subaru Impressors that are traveling down George Street with all sorts of blow off valves and turbos going. And most of all this wonderful array of Dufthof music that is emanating out of the cars with these open windows. Now picture this scene alongside all of these guys with the tricked up car was our two young chubby guys from the North Shore in a BMW with its windows down and the sunroof for some extra projection listening not to Dufthof music but Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On. Now I thank the Lord that he's a God that forgives our past transgressions. But here's the thing, the year was 1998 and it was just after that film, the highest-grossing film of all time that had been the case for 12 years until his avatar eclipsed it recently and of course that film was Titanic. And here's the thing, how can a film, it's been a whopping three and a half hours in the cinemas and engage people when it's a story about a ship. It's about a ship that hits an iceberg and all the reason I think is because it wasn't about a ship was it, it was a love story, Rose and Jack, the drifter that mysteriously fell in love on this big ship and throughout all their adventures through their final scene I hope I don't ruin it for you as they end up in the icy waters, yeah I know it's the ship sinks and end up in the icy waters cold and shivering and that final scene will you see Jack slip away fingertips there into the icy waters below it was a love story, it wasn't about a ship. We finished a four-week series on success or significance. That is the question I've been asking, what do you desire this year? And over the past four weeks we've looked at really two questions that I've asked each and every time, are you trying to steal your significance from your success or are you living successfully from a position of significance? And over these four weeks we've seen from the book of one John that there are ways that the Bible can teach us and train us into these areas of significance, obedience, we obey God because we want to not because we have to, we saw last week that we've given a new identity where kids are the king and tonight of course, look here's the question what if you could find the very well spring of significance, what if you could find something within you that would never run out, something that you could tap on like a nuclear reactor in you, I call it the X Factor. It's the factor that can have us watching a three and a half movie about a ship. It's a factor that can even worse get you bashed as you cruise George Street with windows down on listening to Celine Dion. The Bible calls it love and that's not love between me and my mate Damo. The Bible calls it love, not only that the Bible gives us a perspective on love that is radically different from the rest of the world, radically different from the cliches and the songs and the lyrics, that's what we're going to read from now in the Word of God in 1 John chapter 4 verses 7 through to 10, it's titled God's Love and Ours, dear friends let us love one another, for love comes from God, everyone who loves being born of God and knows God and whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us, he sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Why do we yearn for love? The final line of the old classic jazz song Nature Boyce is the greatest thing that you'll ever learn is just to love and to be loved in return. Why do we yearn for love? Look I think it's one of the great riddles of human existence that we must have a love that if fully received from others are ironically still not adequate enough for us and if we are giving it to others we can't fully give it or we can't fully give it to other people, we demand a love from each other that we can't give in quality and a love that we can't give in quantity and we seem to know that but still we learn for love and why is that the Bible says it's because we were created for love. I love magnets, I love magnets, I've got them all over my fridge, I've got a set of super magnets that if you get them to your credit cards or your watches it's going to send them haywire and it's fascinating things because they stick to each other but you know there are permanent magnets and there are non-permanent magnets. Some magnets maintain their magnetism for the rest of their lives, some constantly have to be recharged and re-magnetized. How does that happen? Well if you've ever done it with a piece of steel you rub a magnet up against the other one and it magnetizes the other right, that's six grade science, I hope you're with me. You see magnets for a non-permanent magnet is a property that's inherited from outside of themselves, you rub it into the steel and see we humans and we're not permanent magnets in that sense. Although we've got all the feelings and the wonderful emotions of it all, somehow deep within us we know right that these feelings of love are imperfect, they're muted, they're never quite fully right and we have this property, this property that we're yearning, that we've received in from the outside the whole time it's called love. What is incredible is the Bible dares to declare that love is more than just a set of atoms running around your head tonight, that love is more than just a set of emotions and a set of chemicals that are running around your brain inside of you. It's saying in Echristians believe that love is a force of attraction from outside of us that's come from outside of ourselves, Jesus says John 17, "Father I want you to show my people, that's you and I tonight, the glory that I had with you before the world began." He was this incredible scene of the father and the son of the Holy Spirit, you see the Bible talks of God in three persons with each other before time began, what were they doing up there? They were loving each other and whether we've experienced fully or not, there's nothing better than to love someone and to be loved and be affirmed and lifted up and that's what the Holy Trinity was doing, in fact the way the theologians talk about it is a community of love, and here's the thing, the good news that we hear tonight is that Trinity, this father-son, Holy Spirit creates us out of that time that they had together before the world began out of love, the Trinity was a very magnet factory from which you were forged, whether you're believing God or Jesus Christ tonight, that's what you were created from and for, and so that is love, the love we experience as humans, it's just like a fridge magnet in compared to the incredible love and the intensity at the center of this community of love called the Trinity. When you realize you're created for love by love, and here's where it helps us, it helps us come to a healthy recognition that all this yearning within us, there is nothing we can do in and of ourselves to fully satisfy that deep inner yearning that we have, only God can't, you were created for something greater, you were created for something deeper. Look at this way, God knew, God knew that every Celine Dion song and every James Cameron movie and every piece of poetry and every soppy love line, what you're really looking for is this, in all the beauties and all the joys and all the wonders of the world, you are looking for this and it is the love of God. God's love, the Bible says so much about love and it's more than a cliche, it's more than Adam's running around their heads, it's more than the mysteries of the world, it's more than poetry, it simply says this is what you were built for, you were built for this, do you know that tonight, otherwise it's going to be a desire in you that it's going to keep churning inside of you deep down and you're never going to be able to put your finger on it, as one songwriter put it, there's a God shaped hole in all of us and a restless heart is searching, one of the lines from the Bruce Almighty movie, you see unlike every other religion in the world Christianity says desire is a good thing, if it's just put in its right place, if it's subordinated to God and so we're not here to eradicate those feelings of being wanted into one others but we're to be plugged into the right spot, the dance at the centre of the universe, this community of love, the Holy Trinity and yet where do we go wrong, I mean right we're still, we're still yearned from time to time, as Wayland Jennings, the country singer put it, we're looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces, searching your eyes looking for traces of what I'm dreaming of, hoping to find a friend and lover, God bless the day that I discover, another heart looking for love, you see I want to ask tonight are you seeking first of all significance in the love of other people, that's the approach, it says love is absolutely everything you know and I know what this can feel like, I was single for six years, I know how much it can tear you up inside and how much you yearn for it and how much you want that companionship, don't get me wrong here, but it's that feeling that if I know how to man or a woman, someone to love me then somehow my life's problems will be solved, why it's because the love that you feel in that relationship is the sort of love that the God is giving you a glimpse of the sort of joy that he created you for, like when you get the special sprays when you play netball or soccer at half time and you sort of spray it on the tongue during the oranges at half time, you just always thirsty for a little bit more and when we experience that at a human level we're just getting a little bit of a mist on the tongue of what the Trinity knows in infinite oceans and so guys part of the danger is and we always have to be cautious for this is if we're saying that if just someone else would come into my life then my significance would be solved, the challenge is that doesn't really work, it's like in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, it was one of the texts that I had to study for Year 12 and I went through it, tells a story of the mysterious Jay Gats and the way that he sought to reinvent himself from a poor boy into a rich playboy of the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, making millions in bootlegging, buys this mansion, throws his incredible parties in the hope that one day the love of his life Daisy would finally arrive into that social scene. This girl that he'd fallen in love with as a poor boy he was hoping that somehow she would refall in love with him as someone else and new improved Jay Gats and Fitzgerald writes this, he says, "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams, not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion, it had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He'd thrown himself into it with a creative passion." You see the story tells of Jay Gats the way that he built this mansion directly opposite her house and he would look at the green light at the end of her dock and dream of the day in which he would one day be reunited with her and in that time he had drawn an illusion of her that was far too great for the human Daisy to ever live up to. The issue is for Jay Gats and the warning for us is that love can become your saviour. Love became his saviour, became his driving passion and if that's the case we can become bitterly disappointed. Fitzgerald says it's invariably saddening to look through new eyes at the things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment. It was disappointing for Jay Gats because Daisy was just human and he was looking to love to be saviour and she fell short of his dreams and his fantasies. You see what I'm trying to say here tonight is that no personal thing for that matter can be your saviour and if you make love your saviour then you could end up being bitterly disappointed. That's the are you seeking significance in the love of others and then if you do get disappointed you go the other end of the spectrum, right? We begin to look for significance in the love of ourselves. There's a great 80s artist, how do I put it? What is love? Baby don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more. Right, it's a how-to-way principle. There is inevitability of our humanness that is, we're going to hurt each other. We're human, we're fallen, we're imperfect. We'll get hurt and people let us down and so the question is what happens to you when the illusion pops? If the illusion pops for you? When reality sinks in, what happens for the girl? It's told that she's a princess and discovers three weeks, five weeks into it that the guy was just using her for sex. What happens when the illusion pops? Reality sinks in and you can go totally at the other end of the spectrum. I think I shared this before article in the Sydney Morning Herald talked about Tarbo and his special dolls. When the 45-year-old who used the suit and him Tarbo returns home, it's not to a wife or to a girlfriend who will wait him, but to a row of dolls lined neatly up on his sofa. He has a name, Tarbo watches television with his toys before bathing and empowering them so their skin feels more human and then taking them to bed. Here's what he says, "A human girl can cheat on you or betray you sometimes, but these dolls never do those things. They belong to me a hundred percent," says the engineer who has spent more than two million yen over the past decade on these dolls. Why? Because it's safer. Can't get hurt. I own them. Can't get hurt that way. And so then, what happens when we retreat on the other end of the spectrum? We see the great, I guess it's explained by the great philosopher Whitney Houston when she said, "In the greatest love of all that everybody is searching for a hero, people need someone to look up to. I've never found any one to fulfill my needs and that's a lonely place to be. So I learned to depend on me." Hear what she's saying? She's saying, "Everyone's got this inner restlessness for a savior. I've got it too, but when I went looking for love in others, they didn't measure up and it hurt so I learnt to love myself and it's safer that way." You know, sadly, when you're saying that, when you get hurt and you get bitter and you turn to the only person that you think can't hurt you yourself, see what this approach is doing? See what you're saying there? You're saying, "I can do a better job at loving myself than God can." The problem is you think the issue is because the other person was human and they were the ones that hurt you and they were the ones that had the faults, but hang on, where are we from? We're human too. And so if it's not someone else's fault, it's going to be your own fault that are going to hurt. It doesn't work either. Why? Because it's deeper than that. It's deeper as to why love never satisfies. I mean, go to the Grand Canyon and try and self-esteem yourself there at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Yeah, you look into it and go, "Holy moly, how is this thing created?" You know that there is something deeper and greater out there. You know it and if your head doesn't, your spirit does, you were created for a greater love, greater than others, greater than love. You can give yourself a Whitney Houston can for that matter. You need to love at the dance at the center of the universe. And when you're looking to others for your significance in love, when you're looking to yourself for significance in love, what are you doing? You're looking for love to be your savior when really you need a savior who is love. And I say that again, you're looking for love to be your savior when really what you need is a savior who is love. The question is, are you looking for your significance in the love of God? Otherwise, you're just like a cat who chases the shadows. It's not the real thing. You're looking for love in all the wrong places. Here's where we come to the scripture here. First John chapter four verse seven to eight says, "Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God and everyone who loves us being born of God and knows God and whoever does not love does not know God because God is love." You see the word it says? It says God is love. God is love. You can't switch that statement the other way around. You can't say love is God because it doesn't describe the mightiness and the very source of love that God is. He's the source of love. He's the essence of love. He's like real Canadian maple syrup. You know what I'm saying? Once you've had a taste of the real thing, you can't go back to the imitation coal stuff anymore. You've got to have the real stuff. It means for the love of God that it's the real, it's the source. It's the essence. It's like a hose attached to a tap. And if you venture away from the source or there's a kink in that source, it's going to dry up. Not only that, the love of God, it's not just mere affections and sweet cards and niceties. It's a complexity to it. There's a vulnerability to it that we struggle with. We struggle with it this way. We struggle to receive it in two ways, I think. The first one is that God can't love me otherwise I wouldn't be going through this. I go, "I can't love you." Where's God in my pain? Where's God in my loneliness? Where's God in my heartache? And in the midst of this pain, we don't realize that what is going on is actually part of a loving plan. The Bible says that God is sovereign. It sees sovereignty at work. There's a real complexity in the love of God. I mean, go and take the Nintendo Wii away from a three-year-old and see what happens. I mean, their eyes can be starting to go square from playing the game so much. And to actually take the thing away from them is for their own health and their benefit. But to them, it feels like the whole world has caved in. Mario has become their God now. And it's the same way with God. There's a complexity to it. And simply God is in control. Maybe he's got to take the PlayStation away for a little bit. I don't know, but he's in control. It's a loving plan. He's the source of love, but he's also the model for love. You see, the second thing that people might ask is, "God can't love me." And this is a classic. God can't love me if he knew what I have done. If he knew my past, if he knew my background, if he knew what sort of life I've lived, you know, how much time do people try to spend covering up themselves and creating images in order to hide their past? That person can't possibly love me if they know what I have done. And then in 1 John chapter 4 verses 9 to 10, listen to what he says here. This is how God showed his love among us that he sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Roman 5's 8's is something similar. It says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us that whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us." You know what both of those verses are saying? It's the Fisher King principle. Now normally, I try and quite movies that you might have seen, but the Fisher King was a bit of an obscure one with Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams in it. It was fascinating. He's back in the 90s. And in the Fisher King, the character there played by Amanda Plummer and plays this Clutsy, Mount Sea wallflower who has no friends. And Robin Williams takes around on a date and they're walking down the streets of New York somewhere. And he says, "I want to talk to you." And she says, "No, no, no. If you've got to know me, you wouldn't like me and I'm tired of rejection. It was nice to go out, but everyone who gets to know me doesn't like me, so thanks." And then Robin Williams says this. He goes, "I do know you. I know that you think you awkward. I know that you think you're clumsy. I know that you are kind of clumsy, but I want you to know that I know who you are and I love you and I will never leave you and I will never forsake you." And she looks at him as if she's looking to the heart of what she thought was an enemy and she sees there an understanding and a love and she says, "Are you real?" This is a miracle that you love me. And when we read this passage here tonight in 1 John 4, 10, "This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for his sin." You know what? You know what? This is saying to us tonight. It shows us a God who's saying, after he's taken us for a walk down the street somewhere and saying, "I do know you. I do know that you think you're awkward and I do know that you think you're clumsy, but I want to know, oh, I want to know you more and I want you to know that I know who you are and I love you regardless and I will never forsake you." It shows us a God who's saying, "I know the deepest, darkest parts of you and I still want to be with you." Guys, in that sense, Christianity is working out how you're going to respond when you realize that you don't have to go looking for love, but love has come looking for you. Go back to the very beginning. Adam and Eve, the man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. Genesis chapter 2 verse 25. You see, the Bible tells us we were built to be naked and unashamed of that in front of God, to be absolutely known and absolutely loved. You see, that's what's deep within us. Humans want someone to know us to the very depths of who we are and still say, "I love you." Still say, "I know who you are and I love you." The Bible says, "You're built to have the God of the universe say that to you." That's what you're yearning for. If you can't have that, your spiritual nature is going to be starved. It's going to be denied food. It's going to fade away. So when God sent his only son for you at the cross, this is the greatest love story ever told. Only at the cross will you find a love that won't send you flowers or just send you flowers or use you or fail you or hurt you. At the cross, you're going to find someone like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack, who chose to sink into the icy depths of hell so that you might live. And you thought the Bible was just about a boat? I thought the Bible was just a story. It's the greatest love story that was ever told. Are you looking for love in all the wrong places? What is stopping you tonight, guys, from receiving the only love that can fill the God-shaped hole in your heart tonight? It's going to be one of two things. It's either going to be pride, you're going to say, "I don't need it. I'm cool. I'm fine with the cliches." Or it's going to be fear. You're still hurting. You're fearful of rejection. You're fearful of loneliness. And you're still processing a lot of those challenges that I've felt before myself. And I know many of you tonight could be going through. The story of the Bible is not a three and a half epic about a boat. It's a love story. And Jesus says, "I know you tonight. I know you feel a little awkward, a little clumsy. I know you to the very depths of who you are. And I still love you. I still want to love you." Know that. And you will know the very wellspring of your significance and untappable source, which is going to well out from within you. You understand you know the love of God tonight. You can experience that when you receive Jesus Christ in your heart. We've spent four weeks asking the question between success or significance. And I'll leave it with you tonight. What do you want this year? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we've talked about concepts tonight that at one level hit nerve bones in many of us, many of us that are experiencing loneliness or the yearning in which I've talked about tonight, Father, and I just pray. I pray your spirit into whoever might be going through that tonight, your comfort and Father, fresh revelation of that which they are really yearning for Lord God. Father, for those of us that are in relationships with other people, we understand that we don't get at 100% right all the time. But we may, we look to you as the source and the model of love to continue to keep us energized and focused and living out all that you have designed us to be in this incredible thing called love. Most of all tonight, Father, I pray for a community that will be living out of their sense of significance. Lord, you've challenged my heart. You've convicted me in many areas, Lord, as I've read through your word in 1 John that not often enough do we go to your scriptures. Live out and read and accept the incredible identity that you bestow on us as your children of God. Father, not often enough do I go to your scriptures and cast my mind and my heart onto the greatest adventure that one could ever be called into in following Jesus Christ and place in their faith in Him. Father, if there is anyone like that here tonight in this community that wants to join me in that posture, Father God, of confession to you tonight, that we might lift our eyes up to you and ask for your forgiveness in that way and at the same time Father God rejoice in the incredible joy and the privilege that it is to be your children, the great blessings that have bestowed upon us in that way and the deep significance that it gives us to live out the rest of our lives. May we start just with 2012. May this community be changed because of that reality. May this world be changed because we are living out this reality. We can only do it unless we have your help through the power of your Holy Spirit and pray that reality over all of us tonight in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. [MUSIC PLAYING]