Holy Proximity 1986

From Isaiah, chapter 57, verse 15. For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite. Jesus is walking down the road, surrounded by a pressing multitude.

His people know he's a healer. They know he's a prophet. But nobody in that crowd really knows who this is.

That this is the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, a woman in the crowd, who's been bleeding for 12 years, has spent all her money on doctors and still isn't any better, whose spirit is broken, whose heart is contrite, says to herself, if I can but just touch the fringe of his garment, I shall be made well. And so she bends down, gets down on her knees, as this crowd is moving slowly, and she reaches through the legs and the ankles and the feet and the dust and the dirt, and touches the hem, the fringe of his garment. And the light of God rushes into her.

She is healed. For thus says the high and lofty one, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. God drew near to her, and she drew near to God, and in that holy proximity, that nearness, life from God changes this woman, restores her.

Now if we are going to live in God and walk in God and move in his grace and do his will, we have to find that place of nearness, that holy proximity, and we have to live there. God has already drawn near to us, and in a special way he comes near to us today, in this place. But we have to draw near to him.

From Luke chapter 4, verse 16 and following. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day.

And he stood up to read, and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written. The spirit of the Lord is upon me.

Because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who were oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Then he rolled up the scroll, sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon him. And he said, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Jesus did not preach good news to the poor over the radio. I'm not knocking radio preachers. Hear me out.

He did not bring deliverance to the captives over the television. He did not open the eyes of the blind with mail order Isaiah, nor did he set the captives free, the oppressed free, by opening a liberation office in Jerusalem. Jesus did nothing from a distance.

He was there with those poor in every way, not just temporarily, not just symbolically, but actually there. And he freed the captives by coming to the prison where they were. He came into their prison, and then he led them out.

Jesus was close to people. He got near to them. They could touch him.

They could talk to him. They could ask him questions. Jesus got close.

He got close to his Father. Even Nicodemus could see that. Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one could do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

He got close to his disciples, ate with them, walked with them, talked with them, prayed with them. Peter did not have to fight his way through three secretaries to ask a question. Jesus got close to the people.

Reading from Matthew 9, verse 10, As he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. They didn't feel threatened. They didn't walk out of the room and say, uh-oh, here he comes, hide the beer.

You know, they came right in. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? But when he heard it, he said, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. And Jesus was in that house, which was Levi's house.

And they were having a party, celebrating the fact that Levi had now given up his old ways and was not in the kingdom of God. And he invited all his friends to come and celebrate with him. And Jesus was there, and he wasn't there so they could take his picture.

Those guys would have smelled that in a minute. He was really there. He was available.

He was reachable. You could say that the power of heaven moved out of this man, Jesus, son of God that he was, because he got close. Got close to his father, got close to his disciples, got close to the wounded ones out there in the world.

From the moment Jesus went down to the River Jordan at his baptism to join himself to our sin, until he breathed his last breath on the cross, where he died under the weight of our sin, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus stayed close to us. He rose from the dead, and pretty soon he's breaking bread with his disciples, having them for breakfast, giving them something to eat, breathing life into them.

He returned to the Father, the firstborn of the new creation, and he kept his promise to be close to us, to stay close. Lo, I am with you always. I will come to you.

I will not leave you desolate. I will dwell in you. I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go.

I will guide you with my eye. Today he comes to us again, communes with us in the bread and the wine. Now our problem is that deep within our hearts, we're afraid to get close to God or man.

I'm not talking about touchy-feely close. I'm talking about mind close, heart close, close enough to be rejected, close enough to possibly get hurt. We're all afraid of that.

Don't look at the other guy. You're afraid. I'm afraid.

We're taking a look again at the passage that Don already read for us in Luke 16, verse 19. There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.

Just give me some crumbs. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. They're the only ones who paid him any attention.

Now, it would not have hurt that rich man to give this man a few crumbs. And, you know, the rich man thought about that. Lots of times he thought about that.

Yeah, that'd be nice. But if I give this guy lying at my gate some of those crumbs, why, he's going to get too close to me. He's going to open up a can of worms.

You know, somehow I'm going to get involved with this man. No, no, no. The best thing I can do is pretend I don't see him, just keep on walking by.

Isn't that the way we do it? The poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, the region of the dead. Being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom.

And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that you in your lifetime had your good things. Lazarus, likewise, in like manner, evil things.

Now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. Besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us. It was your choice, Mr. Christian.

You wanted to stay at a distance. So now you've got your distance. You chose this.

He says to the rich man, he says to all of us, you chose to stay at a distance. You didn't want to get too close, so now you've got your distance. Now there's this great chasm, this canyon.

Nobody can cross it, and who made the canyon? You did! Now it's frozen. It's eternal. Great health, Mr. Christian.

It was your choice. And he said, then I beg you, Father, send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come to this place of poor men. But Abraham said, they have noses in the prophets.

Let them hear them. And he said, no, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. He said to him, if they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

Now it's a good thing to be concerned for people at a distance who are suffering injustice. Send them help. Demonstrate.

Get involved. Pray. But you know, the rich man did all those things.

Why, he had just come back from a tour of Nicaragua, South Africa, Afghanistan, and the West Bank. And he was deeply concerned about all the things he saw. He considered himself an advocate of the oppressed.

Why, advocacy was the big thing of his life. He was on three national committees. But this Lazarus and his game was a different story.

I mean, in this case, if I get too close to him, I'm going to have problems. What the rich man did not understand is that advocacy without proximity is hypocrisy. If I'm concerned for people at a distance but never see the ones near, my concern is a sham.

What we need to see is that the doorway to the kingdom of heaven is holy proximity. In other words, if you get close, you get in. If you stay at a distance, you keep yourself out.

But thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. God will come near to us today. He will draw near to us, bringing the very fire of heaven down into our hearts.

He will heal our bodies. He will restore our minds. He will open our eyes.

He will loose our tongues. If we will draw near to him in three ways, we need to take off our shoes, we need to take off our masks, and we need to take off our rubber gloves. First, we have to take off our shoes.

Take off your shoes, Moses. You're standing on holy ground. Take off your shoes, Joshua.

You're standing on holy ground. Humble yourself. We need to humble ourselves.

You know, we all find it so much easier to see the need for repentance in our brother or our sister's life. We don't see this quickly in ourselves. But there is no way for us to draw near to God, for us to draw near, but to repent.

You don't just repent when you first get saved. You repent all the time, all the time. It's the way to God.

The pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself. God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are. That's the only way this man could pray, because that's the way he thought all the time.

The tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast and cried, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Even at a distance, standing afar off, he draws near because he takes off his shoes. He humbles himself.

He worships. May God help us to follow his example. Learn how to take off our shoes.

Bow down. Worship. Give him the honor he deserves.

And get off that pedestal, which is only for him and not for us. Secondly, we need to draw near to God by drawing near to his body on earth, to his people, to our brothers and sisters. And to do this, we have to take off our masks.

From 1 John 1, verse 5, this is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you, that God is light, and that in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, that is, while we wear masks and hide what we really are, we lie and do not live according to the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.

To walk in the light is to take off our masks. We didn't come here today to play church. We came here today to draw near to each other, to walk in the light with each other, to have fellowship with each other.

And really, we don't have anything in common with each other here, except Jesus. That's why we're all a little bit nervous, we're all a little bit self-conscious, and tend to get a little impatient with this one and that one. The one thing we have in common, and the only source of fellowship we have, is Jesus.

A lot of people think that makes it extremely difficult, but while that may be true, it makes it wonderful, because there can't be any mistake. The only way we can have fellowship with each other here, is around Jesus. And to do that, we have to take off our masks, so that in fellowship with each other, Jesus can dwell in our midst, so that his spirit can move with power.

The Lord is among us, and he is active, and he is doing things here, but we can only be part of what he's doing when we keep taking off the mask. Again, see, I'm inclined to want to take Julia's mask off, or Helen's mask, or Julie's, or somebody else's, but that's not my job. God didn't say, Dick, I want you to take all these people's masks off, there's a bunch of phonies.

He says, Dick, you just handle your mask. That's all you can handle. You take your mask off.

And if each of us will do that, we will have fellowship with each other. Glorious fellowship, and the spirit of God will move with force and power in our midst. Finally, to draw near to God, we also need to take off our rubber gloves, so that we can get near to the lost sheep, the broken ones, the wounded ones, out there in the world.

If you go to the dentist these days, it's very likely that he or she will be wearing rubber gloves. They all wear rubber gloves now because they don't want to take a chance on getting AIDS, and you can't blame them. You know, but if we walk around wearing our rubber gloves so that we don't have to touch those lepers and those tax collectors and this Lazarus who's at our gate, we dry up inside, and the light of God dives in here.

Take off your rubber gloves, says the spirit of God, to us, and reach out, draw near, be there, talk, listen, touch, and don't come down as a professional to a client. Come over here as a peer to a peer. Either we draw near to Lazarus now, while we have a chance, or the day will come when we'll be begging Father Abraham to send Lazarus to us.

Oh, Father Abraham, please send him, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. And Abraham will say, can't be done. Don't you see this great chasm? And do you know who made that chasm? Abraham will say it was you did, and now it's fixed.

For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit. To revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite, God will draw near to us today with power to heal our lives and free our lives and open our eyes and flood us with power if we will draw near to him. And so he says to us together and to each of us individually, take off your shoes, take off your mask, and draw near to your brother and your sister.

And for goodness sake, take off those rubber gloves and draw near to Lazarus and lift him up. And as you do, you will find that you are touching the fringe of the garment of the Lord. And the Spirit of God will come to you.

Let's just take a minute in silence, just in silence, waiting upon the Lord.