There's No Way He Forgives Me Again...

God as Refuge Rather Than a Capricious Deity

When I say God, what pops into your mind?

A lot of people's perspective of God is skewed because that's the type of Christianity that was handed to them, in that God is just a God to be appeased. I mean, it's totally paganism, it's what it is.

No, I was gonna say, it sounds like the pagan gods.

It's like, what do the gods think of us?

I mean, sounds like the gods of the world, you know?

Yeah, we just live in the constant fear of God changing his mind. We come to church feeling this way. We wake up in the morning feeling this way. 2 Peter 1 .1, Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ.

Equal Standing by Faith in Christ

Now, at times that may not seem like anything, but those titles are important. Basically, Peter is one of the most famous apostles, and he's using this title of like, yeah, I'm one of the 12. I worked with Jesus.

I saw him rise from the grave. He discipled me. Listen to what he writes next. To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours. When you look at the standings, what are you looking at? What team has the most wins?

Who's performing the best? And Peter goes, yeah, you might think I'm some kind of a super apostle, but if you have faith in Christ, you're standing before God is equal with me.

Come on, man.

It's equal with Paul. It's equal with whatever person you respect and you think is the greatest Christian of all time. No, God looks at us all equally. And I love this phrase from Jesus when he prays before he goes to the cross, he says, father, help them see that you love me the same as you love them.

That's what it means to have equal standing. So when you hear of God, the first thought you should have is that he considers and loves and cares for me the same as he does all of his children because it's his divine power that has granted us this access, not our performance.

You can never say, well, God has put me at the standing because I've done well. It's like, no, God granted this to me by grace.

Safe in the Presence of a Holy God

I think a lot of times people feel like or think it's wrong to feel safe in the presence of a holy God. And it's like, well, yeah, on your own, that would be true, but not in Christ Jesus. God is our refuge.

I mean, think about how often that is the paradigm that's given to us. That's the metaphor used in the scriptures. It is shot through the Psalms, man. Like he is our safe place. He's our hiding place.

We go to him to take shelter under his wings like a little bird would take shelter underneath the wings of its parent. Envision Jesus walking in on you committing some heinous sin. What do we think his response, his reaction, his posture toward us would be?

With compassion, I think he would look at us and say that this is bad because this is terrible for you. And it's terrible for everybody who is close to you. And he would say, and I love you. And I'm for you.

I'm with you. I'm not going anywhere. Lean into me, rest in me, right? And now live. And I think he could rightly and meaningfully look at us again with tenderness and sympathy and compassion.

In his eyes.

And he could say, dear one, I don't even know what you're talking about. He is the one who does not deal with us according to our sin. And he says, I blotted out your transgression for my own sake and I will remember your sins no more.

So there's a sense in which Jesus is like, I'm not sure even what you're talking about because you're mine and I'm yours. And I don't remember your sin and you're safe.

Coming to God in Confidence in Time of Need

It's like, I'll go to God.

Once I feel a little better about it. I'll go to God. Once I feel like I've done a little something to clean it up or like I have felt badly enough. Like I have enough remorse over my sin or I feel the way that I should about it and now I can approach the Lord.

That's right.

Rather than going to, it's like, no, go to him when you sin, not once you're better.

Because he doesn't just say, that's bad. Let's clean it up.

No, no.

That's right.

Do better.

That's not what he says. Let us with confidence. Now, why would we want to do confidence? Because our perspective is we have a high priest who loves us, who's perfect and has the capacity to do what? Let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in what?

In time of need, in the moment of being caught, in the moment of our weakness, in a moment where we're failed, the sympathetic high priest says, you know I'm here for you. Come to me with confidence and I will provide for you the very thing that you need to sustain you.

Why would the writer of Hebrews tell you he's sympathetic? It's because he wants you to think about him in a certain way. This isn't a God who's cold and distant. The gods in the Old Testament, we knew very little about them and what we do know of them is that they're angry and they're capricious and they are unpredictable.

And we are told our God is predictable and does not change and is sympathetic. It's not that he's sympathetic one day and he's not sympathetic the next day, he is sympathetic.

When you think about God, what do you think? When you think about God, what do you feel? Maybe we'll be helped a little bit to think of him as our loving father and to think of Jesus as a compassionate and merciful, sympathetic high priest.

And we'll be more comfortable and more bold in the ways that we approach him and run to him in every circumstance of life, right?