382: If You Want to Know What God Is, Look at Jesus and What He Did | Will McLaughlin

Good morning. It's a haul of pulpit out to the middle, just like old times. So glad to be here with you guys. If you don't know me, my name is Will McLaughlin and my wife Becky and I lived here with our family for seven years, from 02/2022. Seven really fun years where we kind of landed as just no kids and then as time went on, our family just multiplied. So we grew so much here. We grew spiritually and emotionally and also numerically at Church of the Holy Spirit. So we're really grateful to be back here.

We loved our time in Roanoke and from the very beginning, we've felt so connected here and loved the nature and the people in this church itself. But even from a few years in, my wife and I when we first moved here had just come from China. We were serving there and teaching English and sharing about Jesus. And so we first landed here. We loved being here in America, loved being in Roanoke. I was getting discipled and trained well here. But we also couldn't get China and Asia off of our minds. We just kept thinking about all the people in the world who have no chance of hearing about Jesus, all the people who need to hear this desperately.

So after some time of discerning with many of you in this room and Kay, we felt God kind of discerning us to this open door, this call in Cambodia. So to all of you who know Quake here, just be careful, don't get too much on his good side or his bad side. He might send you for the gospel to the other side of the country, other side of the world. Bishops, I guess, have that authority to send you. No, I'm just joking.

So we're serving in Cambodia. We're planting a church with the help of an amazing team that's on the ground there. We've been there for two years and I feel like God has taught us so much. You feel that way in ministry sometimes or anything you volunteer with? You feel like I'm learning more than the people I'm supposed to be teaching. God's doing more in us than through us and I think that's intentional. I think he often works that way.

Looking at Jesus to Understand God

If you have a bible, please open up to 1 John chapter four, we just read a moment ago. It's not the gospel of John, the big book, it's toward the back of your bible. It's called 1 John. It's a letter that the same guy wrote. Today, we're talking about how John viewed Jesus. John says that Jesus is God's love manifest or expressed to us. So, if you want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus.

However, a lot of us can have the wrong impression of both God and Jesus and I wanted you to think about this for a moment. Have you ever had the wrong impression of someone at first and it's made you shy away from getting to know them? I had this experience when I first started dating Becky. I heard that her dad at that time was assistant director of the FBI. Maybe you guys might know Bob Blacksmith. He was assistant director of the FBI and that title just scared me so much. I was so scared to go meet this man and I was expecting like a Jack Bauer kind of character. Like what's he gonna do to me? But then I went and met him and he made us grilling for us and I began to realize like, oh, he's not so bad. Right? He's very friendly and welcoming.

And then just a few months later, I got the courage to go back and talk to him by myself to ask for his blessing to marry Becky. And he said, you know what he said? He said, absolutely, just like that. I'll never forget, absolutely. And we've been friends ever since. So initially, I had this wrong impression of Bob. This made me scared to meet him. Now that I know him, I know that he's not scary at all. Unless you're a bad guy—then it might actually be scary for you.

So it can be the same way with God. We can have this wrong image of God that keeps us far away from him. And so the same dynamic is at work in our reading today. The more that we understand God, how he really is, his heart, we'll better understand what he thinks of us.

So let's read with two questions in mind. I'm gonna read this again because I always like to do that. It re-centers me and maybe you guys as well. Two questions: How do you picture God? And two, how does John want us to picture God?

Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us his spirit. — 1 John 4:7-13

By this his love is perfected in us that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.

Let's pray. Well, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for this promise just so crystal clear from John that he preserved through the ages for us. I pray that this word would ring true in our hearts today that we would know you deeper and richer, fuller as a result of your word and your holy spirit working on us today. Amen.

So first John is written by John the disciple. And do you know what? John is the same guy who wrote the gospel of John. Do you know what his favorite nickname for himself in that gospel is? The beloved disciple. The one Jesus loves. Do you remember at that scene at the last supper in John where it says that he's just resting his head on Jesus? John loves Jesus and he knows that Jesus loves him. That's the main way, his core identifier of himself. I'm the guy Jesus loves. I love that. It's so perfect.

So it's no surprise then that first John is all about love. It comes up in like every other sentence. John has experienced God's love and he really deeply wants us to experience that love as well.

So our passage today opens really simply. Verse seven says:

Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God.

And this is a beautiful invitation, isn't it? We get to love because God loves. We get to do God-like things, literally to become Godly, right? But even though this is beautiful, it's also possible for us to take this in a way that neither Jesus nor John ever intended. Because if we're not careful, this wonderful invitation can become a burden to us. This verse all by itself can terrify us. We can say, "Do I have enough love? Am I loving enough? Am I good enough?" And this sense of obligation can also lead us to both misunderstand and misrepresent God.

A.W. Tozer, a famous Christian writer said:

The most important thing about a man is what comes into his mind when he thinks about God.

The most important thing I'm sorry, let me read it again.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

Okay? So I'm gonna change this slightly to say that what comes into our minds when we think about God is the second most important thing about us. C.S. Lewis famously said that the most important thing about us is what comes into God's mind when he thinks about us. Okay? So the point is the same and actually, two things are interchangeable because the more we understand how God really is, the better we'll understand what he thinks about us. These two things are interchangeable when they work together.

What Picture of God Do We Have?

So how do you picture God primarily? Is God maybe some sort of Santa Claus who shows up once a year to give you good things for being good? Or maybe he is like a wise but far off distant teacher who teaches you some good stuff and then lets you figure it out by yourself. Or maybe he's a police officer. He's looking for you to mess up. He's always watching. Or maybe he's a boss who comes by, makes his round, looking over your shoulder to see if you've gotten enough work done. What do you think? What's the main way that you view God?

The main problem with all these views is that they treat God as if he is far off and not involved in our daily affairs. Because if we picture God primarily as a Santa Claus or a policeman or a teacher, we may think he'd use us as far off children or distant troublemakers. If we see him as our displeased boss, he's an overseer who stops by occasionally to check our progress. That's all he really cares about—is what we're getting done.

What we think about God deeply influences how we relate to God and the way we picture God can either become a source of great comfort to us or a source of great fear.

And if I'm honest with you guys this morning, I am prone to see God as my boss. He's a good boss, he's a kind boss, but still he's my boss and he's looking over my shoulder to make sure I'm getting enough work done. For me, our move to Cambodia made this painfully obvious. Because I mean, ever since I was like 17, 18, when I started taking my faith more seriously, I've known that I have this tendency to view God as a boss—or rather, not getting enough stuff done for God. But I think in the back of my mind I thought once I moved to Cambodia, once I do this cool thing, then that fear will go away. I'll get there and I'll feel like, "I'm here, I did it. I did this great thing for God." But to my dismay, after like a year or so or even less, this fear actually amplified in me because I saw all of the needs all around me. I saw the homelessness, orphans, school dropouts, human trafficking, alcoholism, gambling, absent fathers.

Where could I even start to begin to solve any of these problems? Furthermore, there are problems that are closer to home for me such as my own kids' growth and health, my language studies, my role on staff at the church. And when I saw all these things piling up, this fear of insignificance grew and grew. And I began to feel really anxious. I had this feeling in my chest, this really tight feeling in my chest that I couldn't get rid of. A feeling like, there's more stuff all the time for me to do. I can't get enough stuff checked off my list.

So I read this book titled Reimagining the Way You Relate to God by Scott Jatani and he says that people are prone to make an idol out of God's mission for us. Even as we serve, we can dethrone God and seek to serve the mission rather than serve God himself. In essence, it's like we seek to serve God without God. This is actually a form of rebellion and it magnifies our fear, especially the fear of insignificance. Am I getting enough stuff done? Am I doing enough?

Maybe you've felt this fear of insignificance. People who have this fear are often highly motivated to achieve. You've got to get stuff done to earn significance. Because God's original intent was always for mission. He called us to rule over the earth and subdue it. We're always meant to participate in God's mission, but not apart from God himself—with God. Remember in Matthew 28 when he says, "Go and make disciples of all nations and behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age." Sometimes we chop off that last part. "Go make disciples. I'll check up on you later, right?" But that's not what he said. "Go make disciples. I'm with you always to the end of the age."

For me, when I began to identify this anxiety, I reached out for help from a lot of friends and mentors, a counselor, and everybody. And God taught me so much by all these different sources. He taught me mostly that I'd been viewing him wrong all along. He's not a policeman waiting for me to trip up. He's not a displeased boss looking over my shoulder. So what's the right way for us to view God?

Looking at Jesus to Know God

Let's look back at the passage. First John 4:8-10:

Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so we might live through him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

So what's the right way to view God? In this passage, it says, "God is love." But what does that mean? It can be kind of ambiguous and maybe a little bit confusing. But thankfully, God makes this abstract truth clear and concrete in the best possible way. God is love, but this love was made manifest. In other words, this is how his love was most clearly expressed to the world. Do you want to know how? He sent his only son into the world in a physical body that can be seen and felt and heard. And ultimately, he sent the same son to give us life by offering himself as a sacrifice for our sins.

So what's the right way to view God? Simply put, we get the best picture of God when we look at Jesus. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. His love is made manifest—it's shown to us—not as a distant teacher, not as an angry policeman or a passive Santa Claus or a displeased boss, but as a compassionate savior who took the lowest place so he could bring us back to himself.

And now that he's come to us in the flesh, he went back to the Father and he sent his Holy Spirit so he's even closer than before because he lives in all of our hearts. He abides in us. First John 4:13 says:

By this we know we abide in him, he in us, because he has given us of his spirit.

Jesus is God with us. He's not just the God who used to be with his disciples on earth. He's the God who abides with us through his spirit so we can get to know him even better.

When I hit this wall of anxiety, I needed this reminder of God's personal presence. I reached out to all kinds of people and my counselor was so helpful. During this time he said, "Read a few books." I read this book called Anatomy of the Soul by Kurt Thompson. It was so good. The author says that when we tell our stories to an empathetic listener, it actually changes our brain so that we begin to feel more at peace and more calm.

And he suggested picturing myself in the stories of Jesus—picturing what Jesus was doing and picturing myself telling him the things I was anxious about and just sitting there and listening. Just picture his face as he listened to me. What might he say back to me? Again, this is not just picturing Jesus however you want. This is based on the stories in the Bible, the picture that's painted of him. So I tried this.

So usually, for years now, I'm like, just by the rules—I gotta cross the Bible in a year every single year. And so to do that, it would be like four chapters a day or whatever. But during this time I was so desperate. I said, "Lord, I'm just gonna read a little bit every day and just stop and listen. Just stop and listen to you." And it was so good.

I get up really early in the morning and I picture just talking to Jesus. I was trying to get out of bed at 5AM sometimes. I would just picture Jesus down there at my kitchen table just waiting. He doesn't need any coffee, he's just waiting for me. And this sounds so weird, but I promise it's so good. And I would just picture telling all the things I was worried about to Jesus and just imagine what his face looked like.

Maybe some of you pray this way all the time, but I hadn't done it before. And sometimes it felt weird to imagine Jesus' face. Sometimes it felt kind of strange just to sit and be quiet. And sometimes, I think I was picturing Jesus from the TV series The Chosen, but it's okay.

And so I'll also say this isn't like I found the cure for anxiety. It's not like a cure-all for anxiety—for different people, different things might work. But for me during this season, this was a rich time of hearing from the Lord because I took time to listen to Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

And I began to picture Jesus having the biggest word I could think of—he had compassion on me. He had compassion on me, and he encouraged me to have compassion on myself as well. And this compassion can overflow to others too.

And I began to realize that one reason, maybe one reason, God called me to Cambodia was to show me that I didn't have to go all the way to Cambodia to be with Jesus, because it's not up to me to achieve significance by getting things done. The most important thing about following Jesus is not what we get done with him; it's walking with him no matter where we are. And this knowledge actually frees me to serve him from my heart and to serve him from a place of love and not from a place of fear or insignificance.

And this can be in Roanoke, in your homes, in your workplaces, hospitals, schools, wherever you are. He calls us to walk with him, and he's got all kinds of doors open for us. But the first thing is that he just wants us to be with him. That's why he came to Earth—to be with us.

Fear and Perfect Love

So for some of us, we might feel like, yeah, picturing Jesus' face still seems kind of scary to me because I don't know what he's gonna say to me. So I looked at God's word and took time to listen to the Holy Spirit. This theme of fear kept on coming up over and over again.

Have you ever had this experience where you feel like you're learning one thing from somebody, then you hear it in a podcast, then a conversation, then a book, and then an article you read? And you're like, "God's showing me all about fear right now." And I wasn't sure why, but he began to shed some light on this.

By this is love perfected in us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. — 1 John 4:17-19

In the context of this chapter, John is saying that God's spirit genuinely changes us to love others and love God. But he always repeats it in the same kind of way. He says, "We love because he first loved us." Jesus is God with us. He came with flesh to walk among us and offer himself as a sacrifice for us. But he's not done being with us because he sends us his spirit. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can know his perfect love for us, and that casts out fear.

Like I said, when I desperately cried out to the Lord for help, he began to reveal himself in all kinds of ways. And all these themes would come up in these conversations, in what I was reading, in my prayers. One of these themes was fear. And I realized that's all anxiety is, right? It's this fear, this tightness in my chest—it's just fear.

So we can be afraid of all kinds of things, but for me, part of the fear was that I wasn't doing enough for God. Like I said, he had given me so much opportunity, and I moved my family to the other side of the world, and now there's even more stuff to be done over here, and I'm not doing enough. So I imagined, to be honest with you, I imagined God's look of displeasure. I looked at what I was getting done.

And God began to show me how wrongly I viewed him. Because one morning in particular, my reading led me to Revelation 1, which is also written by John. And in it, John is praying and he's caught up into a vision where he encounters Jesus. And it's the same Jesus who was on earth, but this time he's different.

He's wearing this long robe with a golden sash and his hair is white, pure white like wool. Some of us it's good news that Jesus has white hair in his glorified state. And his eyes are like a flame of fire and his feet are like burnished bronze and when John sees him, he knows he has reason to be afraid and he falls down on his feet like he's dead, all the way down. He's not just taking any knee, he falls all the way down like he's dead.

And then something amazing happens. Listen to what the glorified Jesus does.

Jesus laid his right hand on me saying, fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died and behold I'm alive forevermore and I have the keys of death and Hades.

Remember, John has fallen down like he's dead, he's all the way on the ground. So for Jesus in his glorified state to put his right hand on John, he's gotta get down on his level like this. He puts his hand on him and he says, fear not. We don't have to be afraid. Fear not because he's come for us in the flesh. We don't have to be afraid because he sends his holy spirit to live in us. We don't have to be afraid because he has already accomplished everything that needs to be accomplished on the cross for us.

When we see when we stop and listen to Jesus, we'll find him saying all kinds of things but for me the biggest thing has been fear not.

Application

Maybe you already know Jesus but you've been viewing him wrongly. Maybe you see him as a distant teacher or policeman or boss. Take time to listen to Jesus both in scripture and in prayer and hear his voice telling you, you are beloved.

Maybe you don't know Jesus yet. Maybe you've always thought he was too far off to care about you. Would you consider this morning Jesus has come among us and he's still with us and he overcame every obstacle to call you to himself?

Maybe you feel God with you even now and you want to know more. At the moment we're gonna have time of just prayer at the rails like we often do like we usually do. At the curved rails would be just time just for you and the Lord. Just listen. At the straight rails will be with a member of the prayer team.

Wherever you are, take time to listen to God now. Take time to listen to him calling you his beloved just like John the disciple. Jesus has overcame every obstacle to be God with us and he deeply longs for us to turn our faces to him as well.

Amen. In name the father, son, and the holy spirit. Amen.