Let’s be honest. We tend to judge people from the outside in – by how they look, or how much they earn, or what they can do for us.  And as a result, we end up missing out, because we don’t take a look at what’s happening in their hearts.

I love the start of a new week. You know our team here at Christianityworks always says to me, “How is it you come up with all these new programs, week after week after week?” And the answer is, I’ve got to tell you it’s the joy of my life to be able to share things about life with you and take a look at them from, well a different perspective. I don’t know … it just kind of comes to me.

For me, the secret is being close to God. I mean I just can’t come up with all this new stuff out of my head. I just spend time with God, day after day and I pray with Him and somehow, as I walk with Him through life I see things, I hear things and they just click for me and hey presto, there’s another program or another series. See sometimes what we do is we have God and spirituality and all that stuff in one box and the life we actually live, well that’s way over there in another box.

It’s not like that for me, I want God close to me in my life. I want to walk step by step each day just knowing that He’s with me and more importantly, that I’m with Him. My life is like yours, life has its ups and downs right and so when it comes to being close to God, well some days that ain’t easy. So this week I thought we’d spend some time with a man who has a real heart after God.

Have you been to a supermarket checkout lately? I was there the other day, a young woman was serving me and she was as bored as. She’s talking to her friend while she’s serving me, and I’ll use that word ‘serving’ in very loose terms. It was just a fabulous experience, there’s one thing for sure. She wasn’t passionate about her job. She didn’t have a heart for what she was doing for me or for anyone else. So many people go through life bored with what they’re doing. Not committed or passionate or excited about what they’re doing but just plain old bored and you know, I’ve seen it in relationships too.

You see this couple out for dinner at the table next to you in the restaurant, he’s on the phone, she’s staring blankly into the air. I think, ‘What a relationship, where’s the passion? Where’s the joy, where’s the desire in their hearts to get connected?’ There’s a well known journalist who’s a self-professed atheist, his dad was a Church pastor and he reckons his dad was the most boring person he’d ever known. What a tragedy!

I mean I’m a passionate person, I’m a ‘boots and all’ kind of guy and I guess, in a sense, it’s in my nature to be passionate but you know something, I just figure we have one crack at life here on earth and I’m going to live that life to the full. I don’t want to waste it being bored or disinterested and in any case, life’s a whole bunch more fun when we’re passionate. Ordinary every day people who are passionate about what they do, well its fantastic when you meet them isn’t it? There’s a plumber I know and a painter, an electrician and a beauty therapist, you see it in their faces when you’re talking to them. It’s a joy to know them, it’s a joy to be with them because they’re passionate about what they do; they enjoy it so you enjoy it.

At the beginning of the program I said we were going to spend some time with a man who has a heart for God. This man is passionate for God. And when we talk about having a relationship with God, well in a sense it’s like any other relationship we have.

Frankly, before I met Jesus Christ for myself my perception was, like that journalist I was talking about, that the Christians I knew were boring people. Now, it turns out that they’re not all like that but still I know plenty who are, they kind of trot along to Church and sing songs and snore through the sermon and they go home and I think, ‘Man, what’s the point? If I’m going to live my life for God, I want to be in their boots and all’. Are you with me?

Well who’s this man we’re going to meet today on the program? His name is David, he’s the greatest King that Israel ever had and he did some mighty things for God but he started off, I have to tell you, as the runt of the litter. He was the youngest of a number of sons and it was time for the prophet Samuel to come and choose the next king of Israel and so David’s Dad paraded all the older sons before Samuel. The tall one, the good-looking one, the strong one, the bright one and Samuel rejected each one of them. At the end he says to Jessie, that’s David’s Dad, he says ‘um, you got anymore because the one that Gods looking for ain’t in this lot?’ And Jessie says, ‘Well there is one more, there’s the youngest one. He’s out tending after the sheep’.

Now I ask you, what does that tell you about what Dad thought of his young son David? It’s not a good start in life is it? I mean, why does this man of God, Samuel, reject all the other sons? Well you can read about it in the Old Testament, 1 Samuel chapter 16. The first one, his name is Eliab and the Lord said to Samuel,

Don’t look on his appearance or the height of his stature because I have rejected him for the Lord doesn’t see as mortals see, they look on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart.

One after one Samuel rejects the boys and then finally they bring David in. Now David was ruddy and had beautiful eyes ad he was handsome and the Lord said to Samuel:

Arise and anoint him for this is the one, this is my king. Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. (1 Samuel 16:13)

Why did God choose the runt of the litter? Well simple, God goes on to say, “This is a man after my own heart.”

This boy had a heart for God and you see that over and over and over again in his life. We’re going to have a look at a few of those; I guess snapshots, of David’s life. Not so much to see about David but to see, well see what God was doing in David’s heart.

Let me ask you something; have you ever felt like you’re the runt of the litter? Like everyone’s taller or smarter, faster, stronger than you are. I think we’ve all felt like that haven’t we? The rest of the world tells us we’re worthless, I mean even David’s dad didn’t think he was worth getting out of the field and parading in front of Samuel the prophet. Pretty grim isn’t it? And yet God is looking around for – not the big one, not the flashy one, not the strong one, not the tall one, not the good-looking one – the runt with a heart after Him.

The little kid that was out there tending the sheep that no-one thought was worthwhile to bring in ’cause this kid could surely never be the king but God was looking for a man after His own heart. God was looking for a man with a heart for God and that’s the important thing. When the rest of the world tells us that we’re worthless, God is looking around for a runt with a heart.

People ask me sometimes, ‘how can I get close to God?’ And I ask them, ‘how much do you really want to be close to Him?’ Are you hungry in your heart after God? Does the Spirit stir you up today and each day? I don’t know I believe that maybe that’s why we’re together today; maybe God wants to touch you today and stir up a holy desire, a holy passion in your heart for Him.

“Father, I pray for each one of us. Pour your Spirit out and give us a heart after you, make us hungry for you, in Jesus name.”

I want to encourage you to pray over this; let Him fill your heart with a passion and a desire for Him.

At some point in life – we’re inevitably confronted by giants – they come in all different shapes and sizes, but inevitably they’re huge and they block our way.  How do you overcome them?  I mean – they’re so much bigger than you.  

I’m excited to be with you today because we’re going to be joined by someone who, as a young man, put a whole army to shame. This is a man who, when people looked at him, well what they saw was the runt of the litter. They never included him in the grown up men stuff. They always left him behind but this young man, well he had something that they didn’t. I don’t know whether this makes sense to you but this lad had, what in my neck of the woods, they call ‘ticker’. In other words he had a strong heart and when this army was paralysed with fear because of the size of their opponents, this kid steps forward and says, ‘I’ll go’.

Perhaps you recognise him, that lad’s name is David. He went on to become the greatest king that Israel ever had but when the army of Israel was confronted by this giant, Goliath, not a single man, not King Saul, not any of his generals or lieutenants, not any of his soldiers dared step out to face this mountain of a man. It took a young shepherd to stick his mitt in the air and take Goliath on. But why? How is it that he could do that when all the grown men coward around him?

It’s tough being the youngest, David’s older brothers, well they were all out fighting in the army and he was left behind to tend the sheep. He comes up to the front line, this day, to bring them food which is how the soldiers received their rations. Let’s pick up the story; it’s a good one, 1 Samuel chapter 17, verse 20.

Early in the morning David left the flock with a shepherd, loaded up and set out as his Dad directed him. He reached the camp as the army was going out in its battle position shouting the war cry. Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each other. David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battlelines and greeted his brothers. As he was talking with them Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, David heard him. When the Israelites saw the man they all ran from him in great fear.

 Now the Israelites had been saying, “Do you see this man who keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his father’s family from taxes in Israel.”

David asked the men standing near him, “What will be done to the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” And they told him what the king had been saying, “This is what the king will do for the man who kills him.” 

When Eliab, David’s oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him. “Why have you come down here and with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked you are in your heart, you came down to watch the battle.” And David says, “What have I done now? I can’t even speak.” (1 Samuel 17: 20-29)

It’s tough being the youngest ones. Its tough being the runt of the litter, no-one takes you seriously. It’s amazing how often it is that people, who are the closest to us, just don’t understand us but David was different from the rest and God’s hand was on him. Have a look at what happens next.

David turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter and the men answered him as before. What David said was overheard and reported to Saul and King Saul sent for him and David says to the king, “Let no-one lose heart on account of this Philistine, your servant David will go and fight him. (1 Samuel 17: 30-32)

You see, there it is, David stands before the king and what does he talk about? He talks about ‘ticker’; he talks about the heart,

Let no-one lose heart on account of this Philistine, your servant will go and fight him.” And Saul replied, “You can’t go and do this, you can’t go against the Philistines, you’re just a boy and this is a fighting man.” David says to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, I struck it down, I rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. “I’ve killed both the lion and the bear and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them because he has defied the armies of the living God.” So Saul said, “Go and let the Lord be with you.” (1 Samuel 17: 32-37)

I guess we know the rest of the story, David slays Goliath but just before he stands out there, the whole Philistine army against him, shields and swords and here is this little guy with a sling shot up against the giant Goliath with his armour and he shouts out to Goliath:

You come against me with a sword and a spear and a javelin but I come against you in the name of God, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me and I will strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth and the whole world will know there is a God in Israel. All those who’ve gathered here will know that it’s not sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle belongs to the Lord and He will give all of you into our hands. (1 Samuel 17: 45-47)

What a gutsy kid, hey? Little shepherd comes up, the whole army’s cowering and David gets up and says this, “Woo hoo talk about a red rag to a bull.”

The thing that hits me between the eyes here (sorry I couldn’t resist that) is that David’s heart for God was developed in difficult times, fighting bears and lions in the wilderness, in fearful times and yet God was in those places with David.

See, this is not so much a story about David as it is about God. God sees things from a different perspective. Right from the beginning He saw what was in David’s heart. See David has been anointed as the king, just a young kid and he’s a man who grows up having killed lions and bears and knowing what it is to have God in the wilderness with you. David learned what is was to be close to God, not amidst comfort and luxury as you might expect of a king but on the cold and dark and lonely and dangerous nights, protecting his sheep.

This is an amazing story, this young man who has a heart for God that’s grown in the most unlikely place and in the most unlikely young man and that heart for God, here, comes out as courage and this kid knows how to rely on God. You know this kid believes in God because he’s had God help him in dangerous spots before.

See, so many people who want to be close to God think, ‘well, well you know, I have to do better or I have to be different or God couldn’t be close to me’, right? That’s completely cockeyed, we’re looking at God through the world’s eyes and it’s just plain wrong. Being close to God is a heart thing and His heart is to be close to you and me. If God is for us, who can be against us?

I want to encourage you today, no matter who you are, where you’re at, what’s going on, God is in the business of growing your heart for Him just as He did with David and then when the giants come along, all of a sudden we have the same boldness that David did, to get out there, to slay the giant when everyone else is hiding under a rock. Do you get it? God gets up close to us in those scary times and does something in our hearts, even in the very darkest hour where we would expect Him not to be.

Getting close to God, sure it happens sometimes in the comfort of a lounge chair. I’m all for spending quiet times with God, but sometimes, in fact often, it happens out there on the battlefield where we least expect it.

They say that revenge is sweet – perhaps. But the truth is that it leaves a bitter after taste, does it not?  And what we do when we have the opportunity to take revenge on someone, it turns out, has a lot to do with what’s going on in our hearts.  

They say that revenge is sweet and let’s be honest about it, sometimes revenge is exactly what we want. When someone’s giving us a hard time we want sweet revenge. When we see on TV or hear on the radio about the trial of the man who raped a murdered that young woman, we want him locked up and we want the keys thrown away. It’s times like that we can be persuaded that the death penalty is perhaps not such a bad idea after all. And yet, revenge is not all that it’s cracked up to be. I think that something inside us dies each time we take revenge.

Sure, we have an inbuilt sense of justice, we do, we just do because God made us in His image, why wouldn’t we have an inbuilt sense of justice but revenge for me, it’s a bit like hardening of the arteries. Little by little they harden and then one day our heart stops beating, it just dies and I have to tell you something, I’m someone who wants to be close to God and when the desire to take revenge grips me, it feels like God is a million miles away. Let’s take a bit of a poke around in that space today in the program.

This past week we’ve been taking a look at our hearts. God looks on the heart. We looked at David the other day and when he was a young man and the prophet came to choose a king, God looked on David’s heart not on what he was on the outside. And then when David slew Goliath, this boy David had courage in his heart when all the other men in the army, much older and much more experienced than him, were hiding under a rock.

What goes on in our hearts is what really matters. Jesus said, “Murder begins in the heart.”

If you hate someone or you’re angry with them it’s just as bad in His eyes as killing them, hmm.

Today I want to take another look at King David and what we discover is that God had done so much in this young man’s heart that he was able to resist the temptation of taking revenge, even against a man who’d been trying to kill him. See David was anointed as king as a young boy well before the current king, King Saul was relieved of the position. And so, this young man had the Spirit of God on him.

You read in 1 Samuel chapter 16 that Samuel the prophet came and chose David as the next king and David said to Samuel,

How long are you going to grieve over Saul? I’ve rejected him.

Because Saul was a bad dude. And so Samuel anoints David as king, this young shepherd boy but Saul is still king and it happens years before. So the whole David and Goliath thing happened, (we looked at that the other day on the program) and David, all of a sudden, has popularity and fame and success. He becomes a celebrity and people start looking to David.

There’s a reason for that because Gods anointing was obvious, God’s hand was on him, God’s spirit was on him and so people started looking to David as being the next king. Saul became a lame duck, he was the king in name only and position only, it was all there for the world to see and so Saul becomes jealous and hunts David down and David is running for his life in the wilderness. Have a listen, I’m reading here from 1 Samuel chapter 24.

After Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines, he was told That David is in the Desert of En Gedi. So Saul took 3,000 chosen men from all Israel and set out to look for David and his men near the Crags of the Wild Goats. He came to the sheep pens along the way and a cave was there and Saul went inside the relieve himself. David and his men however were far back in the cave and the men said, “This is the day that the Lord spoke of when He said to you, “I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with him as you wish.” And so David creeps through the darkness in the cave unnoticed and cuts off the corner of Saul’s rob”.

Afterwards David was conscious stricken, he’d cut the corner of the kings robe off and he said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my king, the Lord’s anointed, or lift my hand against him for he is the anointed one of the Lord.” With these words David rebuked his men and did not allow them to attack Saul and Saul left the cave and went on his way.”

Then David went out of the cave and called out to him, “Saul, my Lord, the king.” And Saul looked behind him and David bowed down and prostrated himself with his face on the ground and he said to King Saul, “Why do you listen when men say ‘David is bent on harming you? This day you have seen with your own eyes how the Lord delivered you into my hands in the cave. Some people urged me to kill you but I spared you. I said I will not lift my hand against my master because he is the Lord’s anointed.

See my father; look at this piece of your robe in my hand. I cut off the corner of your robe but did not kill you. Now understand and recognise that I am not guilty of wrong doing or rebellion I have not wronged you but you are hunting me down to take my life. May the Lord judge between you and me and may the Lord avenge the wrongs you have done to me but my hand will not touch you. As the old saying goes, ‘From evil doers come evil deeds’ so my hand will not touch you.

Against whom is the king of Israel come out? Who are you pursuing, a dead dog, a flea? May the Lord be our judge and decide between us. May He consider my cause and uphold it. May He vindicate me by delivering me from your hand.” (1 Samuel 24:1-13)

Do you see what’s happening here? This is such an amazing response. You see Saul’s out trying to kill David and David has the opportunity to kill Saul and he doesn’t take it. “Some urged me to kill you but I spared you. I will not lift my hand against my master.”

Why didn’t he kill Saul? Because Saul, having been put there by God and because David’s heart was so besotted with his God that he couldn’t bring himself to take this obvious piece of revenge. That small piece of cloth in David’s hand was evidence of his heart for God. In fact at every point in this story you have to look at it and say to yourself, ‘What an amazing guy and what an amazing heart’.

Saul on the other hand gets away and if you read on, he tries this again in the next couple of chapters. You read on in 1 Samuel 26, he tries to kill David again and David ends up sparing Saul’s life a second time.

You see when God gets hold of our hearts, it changes who we are and how we behave, it’s an awesome thing. It is the most awesome thing when you see a man or a woman who lay aside the act of revenge because their heart has been changed by God. I said at the beginning of the program that taking revenge puts us at a distance from God, it breaks our intimacy with him but the converse is also true in my experience. When I lay aside the act of revenge, He draws me closer. I experience Him with a depth and an intimacy and that’s a very very special thing.

See so many people want to be close to God but they just don’t know how. Well here it is. The next time you’re in a cave and someone’s trying to kill you, you can decide to have a stay of execution. You can take the hand that was going to strike them and put it around their shoulder. We can do that, we can make that decision. We can let God have His way in our hands.

God calls us not to take revenge but to love our enemy. And we may not always appreciate it, it may not always feel good at the time but it will bring us so close to God.

Let’s face it – it’s pretty easy to fool other people.  To put on a front that makes them think – wow, he’s got it together, or she’s a class act.  But when it comes to having things together – well, it goes a whole bunch deeper than that.  

There’s one thing I know, if I want to be close to someone like my wife, Jacqui, there are two parts to that. There’s what I do, my hands if you like and what’s going on inside me, my heart. Any relationship has those two aspects: our hands and our hearts.

Sometimes we focus too much on our hearts, we imagine somehow that marriage is all about romance and we come to a pretty sudden thud don’t we? And sometimes we think it’s all about ‘doing’ and we forget that actually what we do and what we say and how we behave, flows out of our hearts.

Let me give you my favourite example; for many years I was a heavy smoker, 3 packets a day. One day I watched someone die of lung cancer. I walked out of that room and threw the half full packet of cigarettes in the bin. That was 27 years ago and I haven’t had a cigarette since. Before I could break the addiction and change my behaviour, I had to have a change of heart. And it’s the same in any relationship, including our relationship with God, it’s about our hands AND our hearts.

The whole ‘smoking’ thing makes you think, doesn’t it? I mean by any rational measure a person is completely stark raving mad to smoke. We know that, it’s going to kill us, we get emphysema or lung cancer or high blood pressure or a stroke or a heart attack. The problem is, when you’re addicted, you don’t behave rationally. Let me say this again; when we’re addicted we don’t behave rationally. And it’s the same thing with anything else that’s bad for you.

Whether it’s emotional, whether it’s spiritual, whether it’s physical we get hooked and so we can’t change it. A person might be addicted to gossiping and they just find it impossible to keep confidences. You may think, ‘ah well, what’s the harm? I mean really’, the reality is, the bad things we’re addicted to have enormous harm, they do enormous damage to ourselves and to relationships and to our outlooks on life.

For someone who gossips, for instance, are always thinking the worst of people, gossiping stunts someone’s growth and ruins their relationships. We might think gossiping is just a small thing but it’s a big deal. But before the person who’s addicted to this, can give it up they need to have a change of heart. It’s almost impossible to give up without that. Addictive behaviour, after all, is addictive.

But here’s the crazy thing, when we realise that there’s something wrong in our lives, what we do is we try and change our behaviour instead of our hearts.

Over this week we’ve been looking at the life of King David because he was a man after Gods own heart. A special thing the heart, it’s a place from which our choices and our actions flow and David goes on to write a psalm about this very thing, it’s Psalm 24, have a listen to it. He writes:

The earth belongs to the Lord and everything in it. The world and all who live in it for He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters. Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart who doesn’t lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false. He will receive blessings from the Lord and vindication from God. Such is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek your face O God. Lift up your hands, O you gates; be lifted up you ancient doors, the King of glory may come in. (Psalm 24:1-7)

A pretty passionate psalm isn’t it? So what’s he saying? Well he starts off by saying God owns the whole shootin’ match. God is God, that’s how it starts off. Let’s stop kidding ourselves, let’s stop beating around the bush. The earth belongs to the Lord and everything in it. The world and all who live in it because He made it. That’s where it all begins and ends for David.

We don’t make God approach us on our terms, I’m sorry. If that’s what we’re thinking, it’s just not going to happen. We don’t say to God, ‘Well you know God, these are my terms and now you can come to me’. No. We approach God on His terms and David says, ‘Well, who can approach God? Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place?’ You know what He said, ‘the one who has clean hands and a pure heart, the one who doesn’t worship impostors or pervert the truth’.

See, what we want to do is believe somehow that if we behave proper, you know what I mean, we’re okay with God, I’m not too bad but actually that’s only half of the equation. God isn’t just looking for people to be close to Him who have clean hands but also those who have pure hearts. And I would argue; we can’t have clean hands without a pure heart.

You know what we call someone who isn’t the same on the inside as they are on the outside, we have a special name for them, we call them hypocrites. Look at what Jesus had to say about some of the religious leaders of His day. Matthew chapter 23, verse 25,

Woe to you teachers of the Law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup and the dish but inside, they are full of greed and self indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the dish and then the outside also will be clean.

The word that sits aback of our English translation for this word ‘hypocrite‘ means literally, ‘to be an actor or a pretender or an impostor or someone who puts on a mask‘. And what Jesus was accusing these religious hypocrites of was being one thing on the outside but being rotten on the inside. And I don’t know any other way to get clean hands other than to start with a pure heart because you and I are addicted to impurity. I don’t know any other way to get a pure heart than to let God purify it. Titus chapter 2, verse 14 tells us that God will,

Purify us for Himself, a people who are His own who are eager to do His will.

And my prayer constantly is for God to clean the inside of my cup because if He does that it will be truly clean. “Purify my heart O God!”

Is what David praised in another psalm, ‘God come and purify my heart’, and it is the one that has a pure heart that ends up with clean hands and the one who has a pure heart, who ends up with clean hands, ends up with an intimate relationship with God. Who can approach God?

Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, the one who doesn’t lift up his soul to an idol or swear by it falsely.

Jesus said it, “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.”

That’s the promise and that’s awesome. People say, ‘How can I be close to God?’ We can’t be close to God if we’re doing stuff that God says is wrong. God forgives, God loves, God wants to draw us close but you know, if I’m doing something that’s wrong that wrongs my wife, we’re not going to experience that intimacy until I get this right, until I stop doing the thing that’s hurting her. And it’s the same with God.

By now you might be groaning under the load of it all saying, ‘Oh oh oh, I don’t have a pure heart. I can’t ever do this’. I want to encourage you in the knowledge that God will purify your heart if you let Him. God will purify for Himself a people who are His own who are eager to do His will.

He will write His words on our hearts and purify them if we’ll let Him. Who can approach God? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart.

Father, I pray that my heart will be open to you in Jesus name.

You know that’s all He needs, someone willing to yield, someone to take a look and let Him have a go at our hearts.

It’s one thing to want to be close to someone.  It’s another thing entirely, actually to be close to them. Take for instance when we’re pulling in opposite directions – well there’s no closeness in that relationship. 

Have you ever been close to someone or at least you wanted to be close to them but you discover that, on a particular issue, you don’t see eye to eye. Maybe it’s a colleague at work and you have a meeting and you just disagree on this one particular issue. And so you both head off, one in this direction, you start doing stuff and she heads off in the other direction and she starts doing stuff and without really realising it you start working against each other, pulling as it were in opposite directions.

Now you don’t have to be Einstein to figure this out but no matter how close this relationship once was, unless this difference is resolved and you end up pulling in the same direction, well it’s going to tear this relationship apart. You see it so often happens. You see it in marriages, at work, in friendships and you know something; it happens in people’s relationship with God as well. It doesn’t matter how close you once might have been to Him, well, we go pulling in a different direction it’s going to get ugly – it just is!

I know its ugly because I’ve been there in my life. And one of two things happens, in fact it seems they both happen in sequence. I want you to imagine a huge ocean liner in the middle of an ocean. It’s headed in a particular direction to a particular port, we’ve always known that, in fact we knew it when we got on the ship; this is where we’re headed. Say you’re a passenger and somewhere out in that ocean you decide, ‘Well, you know, I don’t think I want to go to that port’. You decide you want to head to a different port.

First off it just starts like, ‘Oh well, a dream and then a mild feeling’ but then it eats away at you and finally you decide; that’s it, we have to change direction, we have to take this ship to another port. So, you do the reasonable thing, you go and talk to the captain. You think, ‘I’m going to convince this guy’ but no matter how much you plead or cajole or threaten, he just won’t listen, he won’t change direction, he’s still going to the same port. People can be so pig-headed sometimes, can’t they?

You say, ‘Right, I’m going to fix this’, so you grab a big rope, you tie it to the ship, you tie it to yourself, you jump in the ocean and you start swimming in a different direction.

I know, it sounds ludicrous but hey, we all do crazy things sometimes. You’re swimming, swimming, swimming, trying to drag the ship in a different direction, swimming, swimming, swimming. The first thing that happens is you end up absolutely exhausted and it’s the same in any relationship.

We get exhausted pulling against each other but with God, it’s infinitely more exhausting because you have this ocean liner/swimmer thing happening. It’s not a particularly fair contest and you can only go and do that for so long, it ends up killing you and so eventually, this is the second thing that happens, you untie the rope and you swim in the opposite direction and it’s not too long and the ship, that was your safety, disappears over the horizon and inevitably that’s when the storm hits.

You can’t be close to someone when you’re heading in opposite directions. It’s exhausting, it’s lonely and ultimately it’s dangerous.

This week on the program we’ve been looking at what it means to be close to God and to have a real heart for Him and so today, we need to have a look at this whole ‘pulling in the opposite direction‘ thing because this is where the rubber hits the road. It is, isn’t it? In any relationship, husband and wife, work colleagues, friends, parent/child, if we’re pulling in the same direction its a great relationship but if we’re pulling in opposite directions, there’s no closeness, there’s no intimacy, there’s no ‘oneness’ and this exhaustion thing is something that David experienced.

We looked, over these last few days on the program, at King David because he was a man after God’s heart, so we’ve been looking at the world through his eyes this week. King David was the greatest king that Israel had ever had, a real heart for God but you know, David had his moments. Like the time he committed adultery and murder and you see him praying about this in Psalm 51, it’s a prayer where he comes to his senses. See what happens is, David’s out on the balcony one day and he looks down and he sees this beautiful woman, Bathsheba, bathing naked on a rooftop near by.

So he sends his servants down, he discovers she’s married but he sleeps with her anyway and then, to cover it all up, he gets her husband killed. Now, that’s pretty high up there on the stakes of swimming in a different direction to God, isn’t it? But eventually David comes to the conclusion that the only sensible course of action is to turn around and swim back to the boat, back to God and he asks for Gods forgiveness in Psalm 51.

Create in me a clean heart O God; put a new right spirit within me. Don’t cast me away from your presence; don’t take your Spirit from me. Restore me to the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit God. The sacrifice acceptable to you O God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart O God, you will not despise.”

See, here’s a man swimming out alone in that ocean, coming to his senses, turning around, swimming back.

See we, we get all smart and clever, we start thinking to ourselves that some of God’s stupid rules are so out of date, they were for back then not for now. We know so much more these days, we’re smarter, we’re cleverer, we’re … you know the line that we run in our hearts. ‘No, on this issue, I disagree with God and I’m going to swim in an opposite direction’.

Have a listen to how Jesus puts it in Matthew chapter 11, verses 25-30:

At that time Jesus said, “Father, I praise you. You are the Lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and the prudent and revealed them to little children. Father it was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No-one knows the Son except the Father; no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal them.”

See what Jesus is saying is, all these people who think they’re smart and clever, they’re the ones from whom God hides things. See that hits the nail on the head, the things of God is so simple and so gentle and so basic. We get all clever and wise and learned and well, let me put it this way, full of ourselves and we just can’t see it. Our ego’s get in the road, ‘I know better than God’, so God hides His wondrous beautiful truths from us when we’re like that but the second bit’s fantastic too, listen to this second bit.

Right after that Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, learn from me, I’m gentle, I’m humble in my heart and you’ll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

See, the picture that Jesus is using here is of two bullocks under a yoke and Jesus is saying, ‘get down in this yoke with me and let’s pull in the same direction. Come on, let Me show you, lets pull in the same direction, lets walk together. Are you weary? Are you burdened from pulling in the opposite direction? Come to me, take my yoke, come on, let me show you step by step, lets walk along that journey day after day and eventually we’ll learn to pull in the same direction.’

Eventually we discover the friendship and the joy of serving alongside Jesus and you know the greatest discovery is the further we go with Him, the more our heart becomes like His; gentle and humble and the more we experience His rest. Isn’t that awesome? Isn’t that what it means to be close to God?