SA Ep96 - Drawing Nearer to Thee - Introduction

SA Ep96 - Drawing Nearer to Thee - Introduction

Drawing Nearer to Thee is a 5-episode podcast series built from Ruth 3 and the beautiful picture of Ruth coming to Boaz, her kinsman redeemer. Through this Old Testament scene, we see a spiritual pattern for believers who desire a closer walk with Christ. The series will call Christians to be freshly cleansed, fragrantly consecrated, fitly clothed, fully committed, and faithfully compliant. The heart of the series is simple: Christ has redeemed us, but He also invites us to walk near Him. Drifting brings coldness, confusion, weakness, and spiritual danger. Drawing near brings cleansing, peace, strength, joy, obedience, and deeper fellowship with the Lord. The series ends with the blessed truth that our Redeemer receives, reassures, replenishes, and rests only when the work is finished. In Christ, the work of redemption is already done. Now the redeemed are invited to live near the Redeemer.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Seeking Approval Podcast. I'm Dr. Chris Smelster from Iliad Baptist Church. You know life moves fast, and faith is not meant to be rushed. I want to take some time and slow down with you and have some honest conversations from the Word of God about daily living. So join me here today on Seeking Approval. Backsliding. It's a word we don't often hear taught about anymore. It's certainly one that is not preached on much anymore, but it's a word that is definitely a biblical word. And all it simply means is that you're not closer to God today than you were yesterday. In fact, you're farther away from God today than you were yesterday. So I want to start a series of drawing closer to Christ because I think that each child of God should want to draw nearer to Christ. Nearer to the cross, as the old song would say. And there's something in the heart, I think, of every true child of God, one who knows the saving grace of Jesus Christ, that would want to be near to him. I think it's something that was placed inside of Adam when he was created. When God breathed his spirit into Adam, that spirit is ever longing to get back to God. But a saved person may become cold or distracted or discouraged, sometimes even careless. But beneath it all, there's still a longing that that that says, I don't want to live at a distance. That's why the old song that we sing, draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord, or nearer to the clo cross I cling. And we were not saved to merely escape hell. It seems that our salvation messages in in modern days have become fewer and farther between. They've become very shallow. Salvation is so that we can enjoy the benefits of God. Salvation is so that our sins can just be gone. Salvation is so that we can go to heaven, we don't have to go to hell. All those things are true. Salvation is more than that. I mean, it is a it is a simple act. It's a simple thing that we must do. We must believe. We must hear, we must believe Lord Jesus Christ. And if we do, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us. It is a very simple thing, but there's so much more to it. And the believer who has been saved, one who has been saved, knows Christ, has been called to walk with him, to love him, to serve him, to live in fellowship. Paul said in Philippians 3:10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection. Listen to that, the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. That's not the cry of a lost man trying to get saved. That's the cry of a man wanting to get closer to God, to have a deeper relationship with him. Just close enough that God, if I need you, I'll reach out and grab you. But for the most part, I'm going to kind of do this thing on my own. James 4.8 says, draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Notice there's two actions that take place, and there's one that is upon our shoulders first. It's an invitation and a promise. God doesn't tell us people to draw near him so we can reject them. He doesn't say, well, just stay right there where you're at, and uh then I'll just always come to you. Well, he will. He will come where you're at. He will come and into the midst of your sin and pull you out. But as we're walking in our daily walk, we must continue to strive. There should be two things that we always do. We discussed this this past Wednesday night in our Colossians series. And understanding the grace of God should do two things to a Christian, two constants. Number one, it should put us into a constant state of thanksgiving, that humiliation uh of uh humility, sorry, of understanding what God did for us even though we didn't deserve it. When Paul wrote in verse number 12 of uh Colossians chapter one, when he wrote giving thanks, uh that's the word Eucharisteo, which uh that means living in a perpetual state of thanksgiving to God for his grace. That's what that word, that's what it means. A constant state of thanksgiving. So the two things of understanding the grace of God should number one put us in a place uh of thanking God in humility for what he has done for us, but then number two, it should also put us in a constant state of pursuit. And we should continue to pursue, drawing nigh to God, wanting to know more about him. The prodigal son found out when he started home that his father was already watching. Ruth found out when uh she came humbly to the feet of Boaz that the Redeemer was willing to receive her, to reassure her, to provide for her, and the sinner finds salvation when he comes to the feet of Jesus, and the saint finds fellowship whenever he draws closer to God. Drawing near to Christ will uh bring so many blessings in our life that it's it's almost innumerable. There's clarity when we walk with him, when in the nearness of God, there's there's understanding of things because God will expose things in our life that we must need. It brings peace, a peace that passes all understanding. Isaiah said that he will renew their strength. It brings strength when we draw closer to him. It brings joy. David said, In thy presence is fullness of joy. At thy right hand are the pleasures for everyone. It brings joy and pleasure. It brings discernment. If we stay close to Christ, we will find that some of the things that the hazards and the tripfalls of this world that we continually find ourselves in, that if we walk close with Christ, we'll find ourselves being able to discern some of those things better. There's also negative side effects when we begin to drift. So not only is there positive when we get closer, there's negative when we begin to drift. And drifting, it rarely ever usually happens all at once. It's not something usually that just wake up in the morning and all of a sudden. It begins with missing uh prayer time or getting relaxed on Bible reading, or you know what? I used to get up and pray in the morning, but I'm just going to sleep in, and then one day turns to two, and two to three, and three to a week, and a week to two weeks, and two weeks to a month, and a month to six months, and six months to a year. The next thing you know, you haven't gotten up and prayed, read your Bible, doing the things that you once used to do. Now there's no game plan. Some people say, well, I don't know the game plan. Like, when am I supposed to read? Am I supposed to read in the morning? Do I read in the in the evenings or in the afternoon? When do I pray? The Bible doesn't lay out a specific game plan that says, this is when you have to do this, and this is when you have to do that. I know that there are religions out there that say that you have to pray five times or uh you know, we have to do this thing. We should have a be in a continual state of prayer, thanksgiving, and fellowship with God. We should read our Bible as oft as we can. We should pray as oft as we can. And matter of fact, one of the ordinances that uh God gave us, that Christ gave us, is that we are to uh have the communion, the Lord's Supper. And he didn't even lay out a time frame for that. He just said, as oft as you do this, so however often you do this. So it's not like there's a game plan, a checklist that we need to go down, like, okay, today at 6 a.m. I did this, okay, at 8 a.m. I did this. So we we when we don't have that checklist, we can kind of let things slide. And then we begin to tolerate things. And then bitterness may start to grow. Little worldliness here and there. Silence on some convictions that we once used to have. We go we grow comfortable. We grow comfortable without Christ. We go comfortable without the prayer, we go comfortable without the Bible reading. When we begin to stray from Christ, several things begin to happen. Sin becomes easier, prayer becomes harder, worship becomes I mean, really non-existent. It will become it will go from uh spirit and truth to mechanical to really non-existent at all. The Bible becomes less important, the world becomes more attractive, the conscience becomes uh more seared, the heart becomes uh hardened and restless, the tongue becomes less guarded, the mind becomes uh an open uh gate to Satan and the things of the world, the home becomes more vulnerable, the testimony becomes less convincing, the joy of salvation uh becomes a distant memory. David knew what it felt like to fall into that category. And he said in Psalm 51, too, he said, Restore unto me thy salvation. He's not saying save me again, God. He's saying, Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, the understanding of what it means to be saved. That's why closeness to to Christ matters. And that's why this series, I I it's not just a series about Ruth or about David or uh about the prodigal son. The the the truth of this series is that we need to grow closer to Christ. There's a difference in knowing facts about Christ and having that uh gonosco, that that intimate understanding, that experiential knowledge of Christ. A person can know the doctrine of Christ and be silent on everything else. The goal is not more doctrine. That's why I tried I've tried in these podcasts to not deal so much with doctrine. I know we just looked at the articles of faith, but the articles of faith, when you look at them individually, should increase our walk with Christ daily. It should increase our joy, it should increase our peace that we have in knowing those things because it makes life, it makes a Christian life better, easier to live, to understand those things. And so I'm not trying to give you more doctrine in these. We can we can do plenty of that. Come come to church, join in with us at church. We get plenty of doctrinal preaching at church. But in his podcast, I want I want to I just want to deal with walking a better life for Christ. Being a better Christian to those around us, being a better role model to the ones who are watching us, and people are watching. So I want to look at in this series, I want to look at five simple steps. They're easy, they're not hard to do, but they're very deep. And those are to be freshly cleansed, to be fragrantly consecrated, to be fitly clothed, to be fully committed, and to be faithfully compliant. Those five things will increase our walk and our nearness with Christ. It's not steps to earn salvation, it's not works to which we can make ourselves acceptable unto God. It's it's simple things that we can do to increase our walk, our nearness, to cling to Christ, if you would say. And so in the coming days, we'll be looking at these, and I hope that you'll join in with us as we will continue to try to increase the nearness that we all must have to Christ. I'm looking so forward to diving into this with you. Grace and peace to you. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Thank you for joining us today on Seeking Approval. You know, our faith oftentimes grows in quiet places. I hope today's conversation gave you something worth carrying throughout the rest of this day. And join me, Dr. Chris Smelser, again next time as we continue thinking, learning, and walking together. Until then, grace and peace to you from Seeking Approval at Gilead Baptist Church.