God has an amazing plan.  It’s a plan for intimacy with you and me.  I’m talking the sort of closeness that comes when a man and woman marry and make a home and life together.  In fact - God wants to set up His home in you and me.

WEDDINGS ARE WONDERFUL, BUT …

I just want to set the scene … we are in the second programme of a four programme series that I’ve called “How to Get Close to God”. And so many people have this desire to be close to God – they want it, but it’s been elusive. It’s hard to get close to God – we can’t see Him, we can’t touch Him, we can’t hear His voice – we want it, but how?

Interesting … a husband and a wife, they love each other, they want to be close and yet so often marriages fail because they just don’t know how to be close and how to love one another. And it can be the same thing with God. So often we drift away; we hear the promises of God but we just don’t know ‘How can I live them out? What do I do? How can I be close to God?’ And so we can’t believe the promises because we can’t experience them.

We began this important series last week on the programme when we looked at God’s promise that if we believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins, then we have already been brought close to Him. That promise is kind of like the marriage promise that a husband and a wife make at their wedding – it’s completely unconditional – it’s a promise for life. And from God’s perspective, there’s no divorce.

Let’s have another listen to that promise – it comes in two parts – the first part is about God’s desire; the desire of His heart. Have a listen – if you’ve got a Bible, grab it, open it at James chapter 4, beginning at verse 5. This is what it says:

God yearns jealously for the Spirit that He has made to dwell in us. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Humble yourself before the Lord and He will exalt you. (James 4:5)

And the second part is what God did to fulfil that desire; what He did comes in Ephesians chapter 2, beginning at verse 13:

Now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away, have been brought near through the blood of Christ. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near, for through Him we both have access to the Father by the one Spirit. (Ephesians 2:13-18)

A desire and an action. Together He’s promised the intimacy for us … a promise He will never break; a promise that we can live our lives in with absolute certainty.

So the first step that brings us close to God is the step that He takes through the cross, towards each one of us. It’s a step that He took – the cross is for you and for me – the cross opens the way to God for each one of us. In fact, the cross is the way. That’s why Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one shall come to the Father except through Me.” And the only response that He requires of us is simply to believe in Him, with all that we are – with our very lives – to put our faith in Jesus.

I don’t know about you but every time I rest in that wondrous truth my heart is fit to burst with a joy that words can’t describe. So often I have sat quietly on my own, just gazing with the eyes of my soul, at that wondrous cross and wept with joy at God’s incomprehensible plan to draw me close to Him. Those times without doubt, are the high points of my life. Even if all around there are dark storm clouds; even if all around people seem to be raging and arguing and there is conflict in the middle of that, I can sit quietly and experience the knowledge of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Today I want to take a look at the next step to getting close to God. He took that first mighty step – we looked at that last week on the programme and we respond with a small stumble of faith and … there it is – the marriage promise; the marriage covenant; the eternal relationship between God and you, between God and me, has begun – an eternal marriage.

But what comes next? How do we experience the closeness, the intimacy of that relationship in the reality of our lives? Well, this week we are going to take this one step further, well, not just us, but God. And to understand what He’s about, we are going to use the language of marriage because it makes an awful lot of sense.

Weddings are wonderful but they don’t go on forever. They’re celebrations, when everybody gets dressed up and family and friends come along – this beautiful ceremony where a man and a woman decide in front of everybody, to make that promise; that declaration that they are going to spend the rest of their lives together. Then they have a ceremony, they sign the register, there are flower and photos and a feast and it’s fabulous.

And it’s exactly the same at the moment that we go to God and ask for His forgiveness and accept Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord. It’s an awesome, awesome thing! If it’s something you have never done I just want to encourage you that there is no time like right now, to pray just a simple prayer.

Now back to my wedding – I remember that time – when Jacqui and I were married; a few years ago now but it was just unreal. Being a typical male I said, ‘Well, why don’t we just go to church on Sunday morning and have the wedding as part of the Sunday service and we can have some coffee and some fairy bread afterwards.’ Well, not surprisingly, my lovely Jacqui did not quite see things that way. Instead we hired a marquee and put it up on the vacant block next to our church building and our friends and family came along. By the way, I still had the fairy bread served to her at the bridal table and I had the video with a priceless expression on her face when the plate arrived. Anyway, it was just a wonderful celebration of a man and a woman falling in love and deciding to spend the rest of their lives together as husband and wife.

But, you know the best part of that day for me was when, at the end of the celebration, the car came to pick us up and we left everybody else behind. I still remember that feeling when we hopped into the car to take us to the airport so that we could fly off on our honeymoon. I remember waving to the people and driving off thinking, “This is by far the best part of the wedding, leaving the people behind.’ It’s not so much that I didn’t enjoy the celebration, I did, it was great – but heading off together as husband and wife was awesome. And so began that process of becoming one; of making a life together and a home together, “The two shall become one flesh and cleave to one another.”

See, it’s exactly the same when we leave the rest of the world behind for Christ’s sake; when we except Jesus into our hearts; when we accept once and for all, His offer of eternal relationship through His sacrifice on the cross. We head off with Him. And strangely, in the Bible, God uses the same language as the language of marriage to describe what happens next. And we are going to have a look at what happens next, after that beautiful marriage promise, next.

UNDER ONE ROOF

We were taking a look earlier at how two people come to be one; to be intimate and close in marriage. The wedding is great but then they leave all the other people behind at the wedding and head off on their own, to become one – to set up home together – well that’s marriage.

But how does this closeness, this intimacy work in our relationship with God? As it turns out, exactly the same as in a marriage. We set up house together, we move in with one another – God moves into us and we move into Him – we live together with God, as one. That’s Jesus plan – take a look – He says to His disciples:

If you love me, you will obey what I command and I’ll ask the Father and He will give you another counsellor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world can’t accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him but you know Him for He lives with you and will be in you. I won’t leave you as orphans; I’ll come back to you. Before long the world will not see Me anymore but you will see Me. Because I live, you also will live. And on that day, you will realise that I am in My Father and you are in Me and I am in you. Whoever has My commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father and I too will love him and show Myself to him. Then Judas – not Judas Iscariot – said “But Lord, why do You intend to show Yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus replied “If anyone loves Me he will obey My teaching. My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love Me will not obey My teaching. These words you hear are not Mine; they belong to the Father who sent Me.” (You can read that in John chapter 14, verses 15 to 23)

See, that, my friend is the language of intimacy and closeness and eternally living with God. Listen, He talks about the Holy Spirit – he says, “He lives with you and will be in you.” And again “My Father will love you and we will come to you and make our home with you.” Isn’t that what it means to be close? I couldn’t imagine living apart from my wife Jacqui, in fact, just as I was writing these words and preparing this script, I was sitting in an airport lounge, about to head off overseas and be apart from her for a week or so.

Now, I love being about God’s business, but travelling, well, it’s a sacrifice for me because I hate being away from Jacqui and even before I stepped onto that plane I was sitting thinking ‘When am I going to be back with her?’ That’s what marriage is? Why would we imagine that it’s any different in our relationship with God? Imagine going to a wedding; a great celebration, but afterwards instead of the bride and groom heading off to make their lives together under the one roof, the husband goes back to his old home and the wife goes back to her old home. They make the promises, they have the celebration but they never make a home together. They never live out the promise with their lives.

Now we have some friends who were married recently – he is an Australian, she is from the Philippines. And because of the immigration laws in Australia, she was forced to leave the country after the wedding and for several months until it was all sorted out, they had to live apart, even though they were married. It was a devastating time for them.

It was the most awful time but you know something? That’s how some people approach their relationship with God and that’s the very reason why so many people believe in Jesus and yet never experience the intimacy – the utter oneness with Him that comes from living their lives with Him.

But there is a price to intimacy. I want you to notice when Jesus spoke of His intimacy, He put clear conditions on it. Let’s look at it again, this time just a shortened version. If you have got a Bible, open it at John chapter 14, beginning at verse 15. He said:

If you love me you will obey what I command. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love him and show Myself to Him. If anyone loves me he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. (John 14:15-21)

See, there’s clearly a price to pay for this intimacy – just as there is a price to pay for being married – now it’s so easy to dismiss this. For instance, someone might say ‘You see, I knew when it comes right down to it, this ‘religion’ thing is just another bunch of rules.’ The same could be said of the constraints that marriage places on us.

Before I married Jacqui, I was free to come and go as I pleased; I was free to date other women but when I married this wonderful woman that God gave me, I had to give up those so-called freedoms. Since marrying Jacqui I just can’t decide to go out every night with my friend – I have a wife to consider – and I definitely can’t go out with other women – that’s obvious. Yet far from feeling restricted in those natural constraints that come with the exclusivity of marriage, the exact opposite is true. Maybe sometimes there are sacrifices but they are the very things that set me free to experience the wondrous intimacy that only marriage brings.

So many of us, when we accept Christ, we go ‘Yippee’, isn’t it wonderful, but then we go on and we live life as though nothing has changed – as though believing in Jesus, well, it’s not a new life. It’s as crazy as the notion of this man and woman getting married and going back to their old lives and living in separate houses and dating other people.

And then we wonder, ‘Why is it that I’m not experiencing this closeness to Jesus that other people seem to have?’ When you love someone and you have made a lifelong promise of exclusive commitment, setting up home together is wonderful. But, yes, it’s an adjustment, it involves sacrifice and anyone who has been married for any length of time will tell you that it’s not easy some days. But it’s God’s plan, not only for husband and wife, but for each one of us when we believe in Jesus Christ.

And when a man forsakes relationships with other women for his wife and when she forsakes relationships with other men for her husband, that is as you and I can plainly know, is the place of beautiful intimacy. It’s the closest human relationship possible.

Now listen again to what Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them and we will come to make our home with them.” Isn’t that outrageous? Isn’t that so different from the notion you can believe in God, you can believe in Jesus and still keep Him at a distance? It’s a beautiful picture, saying ‘If you love Me we are going to come and make our home in you – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, indwelling in us because we have taken a step of faith, not with our heads; not with our mouths but with our lives and how we live.

AN INCREDIBLE INVASION

A few years ago I was talking with a young Jewish lawyer about this very question and he said to me, ‘Hang on just a minute. Isn’t that an incredible invasion of privacy – this notion of God moving in with us?’ I was stunned. I had never quite looked at it that way and it still brings a smile to my face today. Yes, I guess living together is a bit of an invasion of privacy but when you love each other, you want to be together and you want to pay the price.

There is not a single part of me that wants to have a relationship with any other woman other than my wife Jacqui. And it’s the same in my relationship with God. Yep, I make mistakes … I make mistakes every day because I’m human but then I look at the obedience that Jesus calls me to. Actually, there are very, very few things that He says to us ‘don’t do’ – and when I look at those, like stealing and slandering and arguing and lying, it’s blindingly, glimpsingly obvious that they are selfish things that ruin our lives.

Listen again to what Jesus says:

Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home in them. (John 14:23)

The full effect of what Jesus is saying here runs something like this – If you love me I will come and live with you. I will never leave you – everywhere you go, every minute of the day, I will be with you.

That’s the second part of God’s promise – that He will come and make His home in us. God’s address on planet earth is me – God’s address on planet earth, if you believe in Jesus Christ and love Him, is you and He will never, never move out. The marriage vow, the first part, is the grace of the cross and our heartfelt response of ‘I believe’ – that’s the marriage.

But I don’t love my wife just with my head – I love my wife with my heart and my life. In the same way, I don’t love my God with my head – I love my God with my heart and my life. And because it’s a heart relationship, the next logical step is that we should life together in a home, in a close personal relationship that’s real. And that is the promise of God; that’s what it means when Jesus says:

I will send you another comforter just like me, the Holy Spirit, whom the world cannot see but you can see. (John 14:16-17)

The Spirit of God comes and lives in us. It’s a promise of eternal intimacy open to each person who believes and who sets their heart to accept God on His terms through simple, faithful obedience.

I know some days when I make mistakes; when I sin, it disrupts my intimacy with God. It feels as though my prayer is just bouncing off the ceiling, just as intimacy in a marriage is disrupted when a husband and wife argue. That’s why I keep very short accounts with my God. That’s why I go to Him as quickly as I can – I say ‘Lord, I’m sorry, what I did was wrong, I confess that and I ask You to forgive me through Jesus Christ. And my desire, in Your strength, is to turn away from these things.’

To ‘turn away’ means to repent – to turn away from the things I know to be wrong. And my God forgives me every time because that sin is already paid for on the cross by Jesus. In fact, He forgives in an instant and that forgiveness is what restores the fellowship between us and Him; the closeness, the intimacy.

This is where God makes the rubber hit the road. You and I may feel like He is a million miles away but when that happens we can fall back on the promises of God. Those two promises are that He has brought us close to Him through the blood of His Son and that He has made His home in us. Those are God’s unbreakable promises that He will not change – He won’t renege on them; He won’t walk away from them.

Now we have a decision to make – the same decision that a man and a woman have as the foundation of marriage – will we, you and I, serve Him and Him alone? Will we obey Him? Will we accept His ways above our ways, above the world’s seductive comforts and creeds? Will we step into the paradox of the freedom of life in Christ by obedience to Him?

Because (let me say this plainly), until our hearts cry out, ‘Yes!’ that intimacy with God; that closeness that our heart desires, will forever elude us. The decision is yours; it’s mine! It’s such a simple choice and yet so many tarry on the fringes of a relationship with God because they won’t make the decision because of what it costs them.

Let me share with you, in closing, some beautiful words from A.W. Tozer’s “Pursuit of God”, because these words may just help a soul, here or there, finally cry out that all-important, ‘Yes!’ with their lives. He writes:

The man who has God for his treasure has all things in one. Many ordinary treasurers may be denied him or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one by one, he will scarcely feel the sense of loss for having the source of all things he has in one, all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he may lose, he has actually lost nothing for he now has it all in one and he has it purely, legitimately and forever.

The decision is yours; the decision is mine!