It's a joy to be with you here. And there are still some of you that I have not gotten to know personally. This is quite unstable, like human relationships. But I hope that by the grace of God, there will be an opportunity yet to get to know most of you. Because friendship is what this camp is about. And I trust that friendship is something that you value. Otherwise you wouldn't have come to this camp. And perhaps if the Lord permits, we will be able to build up some friendship between those of us who still don't know each other.
But God has very few friends. And in the question time yesterday, you will recall that one of the questions was in fact on this very point: why are there so few friends of God? Of course, there are more than two friends of God in the Bible. Only two are mentioned in this way. But there are quite a number of friends in the Bible, relatively speaking. Of course, all the prophets were friends of God. And we saw that disciples are or should be friends of God. But in proportion to the number of people in any church, and in proportion to the number of people in the world, it is true to say that God has very, very few friends.
There was another question that asked: what are the problems of friendship with God? Now that, of course, is two related questions. There must be some very serious problems about being a friend of God. Otherwise, God would have a lot more friends, isn't it? There must be some serious problems. And I propose in today's message to examine the root problem. What is the problem for you and for me to be a friend of God? I wonder if you are aware of what problem in yourself prevents you from being a friend of God.
Does God have so few friends because he doesn't want friends? Is it because he finds that, well, he's very contented in himself. Who needs you? What can you give to God that he hasn't got? And if we are talking in terms of getting things, he really doesn't need us, as Brother Chung Pang was saying yesterday. He doesn't need us, does he? It's we who are in need, not he. We may need friends. He doesn't need our friendship. So is it the case that God, because he doesn't need any friends, is going to make it very difficult for us to be friends with him? Now that is certainly not the case.
Yesterday our Brother Boone was talking about communication. He said one of the important principles of friendship is communication. Now take a look at your Bible. If we want to talk about communication, look at this Bible. It's quite thick. Here God is communicating to us, communicating to you and to me. And in my Bible, I have about 1,200 pages. Now that's a lot of communication. Has your girlfriend ever written 1,200 pages to you? I doubt it. Have your parents written 1,200 pages to you at any time? If you would try to copy the Bible by hand, I wonder how many years it would take you to get through this Bible. Just copying it. Not writing any original thoughts. Just writing it down, word for word. 1,200 pages. And if anybody said that God doesn't like to communicate, then they haven't been looking at their Bible, have they?
God has been talking to us, communicating to us, speaking to us, and we are the ones who are not hearing. We're not hearing anything. The Lord Jesus said, "You hear and you don't hear. You listen and you don't understand. You look and you don't see. I've been talking to you the whole time. I've been communicating, pouring myself out. And you don't hear anything." You say, "Where is God? I'm still listening. He's so silent. He doesn't speak." Well, I can read this to you on tape and he's speaking. You want to hear it rather than read it? That's okay too. Nowadays, maybe we prefer listening to reading, is it? What does the first words of Hebrews say? It says, "In times past, God spoke to us by prophets." He kept talking to us through all generations. He had his spokespeople. He had his prophets. His friends were talking to us, inviting us to join his other friends. We weren't listening. And then what does the writer to the Hebrews say? "But in these last days, God has spoken to us by his Son." Now, if his prophets didn't get the message across to us, then maybe his Son would do it. Maybe Jesus would get the message of friendship to us. But have you heard the message? He's still saying, "Where is friendship? Where is God? I don't hear him speaking to me." Well, just look at what you're holding in your hand. "Oh yes, I've been reading it. I don't know what he's saying to me." That's another problem. But don't say that he didn't communicate. If you don't understand what he communicated, it's a different thing from saying that he didn't communicate. He's been revealing himself all the time.
Yesterday, some of us were looking at the sky trying to see whether we knew which one is Venus or Mars or whatever is up there. I'm afraid our astronomy is not very good. Couldn't tell whether it's Mars or Venus or whatever. But what does Psalm 19 say? That the whole creation is talking to us. Psalm 19, the first two verses you can see for yourself: "Day unto day, speech is coming forth." It is speaking, not with words. It is silent speech. But everything is revealing God to us if we have eyes to see. But we have no eyes to see. And we're saying, "Where is God communicating?" Everything is silent.
It's like this room. It's wonderful. Have you ever looked at these tiles? I've been looking at these tiles when I was sitting there. Not because I wasn't listening to the preacher, but at the time, I was looking at tiles. Soundproof. Sound-absorbing tiles. Very interesting. They absorb sound. If it hits it, then it doesn't bounce back so you don't have an echo. Those of us who were at the camp in Hong Kong, we had a great problem with echoes. Things are echoing from all directions. You don't know which one you are listening to. The preacher is speaking three times the same message to us. Maybe it would be better if we had some echoing panels. I speak once and you hear it three times. But it seems that we are like this. The sound comes and it's just absorbed. And nothing is accomplished. It simply disappears. God speaks to us. And where did it go? You listen to the message and the message is not absorbed in the sense that you have taken it in. It simply absorbed in the sense that it vanished. What did the message do? It accomplished nothing.
God has few friends. But why? We see that it's not because he doesn't want friends. You look at the whole of the Bible and there we read through the Bible and all through the Bible God is talking to us, calling us to himself. It is a mystery to us why a God so wonderful, so great, wants the likes of us to be his friends. But perhaps there we have forgotten one little thing: what God can do with you and with me. It is a mystery that such a wonderful God wants a friend like me or like you. In our present state, I think you and I would admit, we are not even worth knowing. Who wants to be friends with the likes of me? I mean, if God would play chess with me, he would be bored to death. I might think I am a good chess player, but he has two moves — checkmate — finished. That is exactly what happened to me. I used to play Chinese chess with my father, then I tried to learn Western chess, and once a Western chess champion played with me. He said, "How about a game?" I said, "Good, good, good." And I tried my skill on him. He finished me in three moves. I couldn't believe this. I moved this, he moved one. I moved another one, he moved another one. And I thought, oh, this is going quite well. He said, "Checkmate." I said, "What?" He hasn't started the game yet. I mean, what do you want friends for if you can't even play with them? You can't enjoy one another. How is God going to enjoy a game of chess with me? I lose in three moves. He beat me in three moves. God will finish me perhaps in two moves. I think one move — maybe two moves. In other words, we are right to think, why does God want me as a friend? What can he get out of me? He can't even get some amusement out of me. He can't even play a good game of chess with me.
But if we think like this, we have forgotten what God can do. You see, the gospel is a gospel of transformation. The gospel is called the good news not because it looks at us as we are, but because God's power can make us something beyond our imagination. The whole Bible speaks about transformation and glorification. What does the apostle John say? He says, "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." The vision of God will transform us. And you know what will happen when God has finished transforming us? He can really fellowship with us. He can really fellowship with us. We can really give him a good game of chess, to use that illustration. Not three moves. I really get going with a good game of chess that he can enjoy.
The point is that friendship is fellowship, but he cannot fellowship with you and me in our present state. Why do we talk about salvation? Salvation is not just you get to heaven and we are all going to play the fiddle. We are not interested in musical instruments. Singing is not my specialty either. I enjoy listening to other people sing, but in the choir of angels, I think I leave the angels to sing and I will sit back. And what am I going to do in heaven? Listen to concerts all day? You see the point again here is this: if you cannot enjoy friendship with God now, you don't want to go to heaven, do you? To be bored to death. Who wants to lose in a chess game every three moves? This is no game. It's not interesting for God. It's also not interesting for us. There has to be something more than that. But if we have not begun to enjoy salvation — that is, to enjoy true friendship with God now — who wants to get to heaven? Honestly, who wants to go to heaven? To live forever and ever would be boring. Who wants to live forever and ever?
So friendship — why does God want to be friends with us? I'm trying to answer that question also from last night, because we didn't have much time and these are important questions. Not because of what we are now. Try to understand it, I beg of you. But what God can do with you. The apostle Paul says, "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, the things that God has prepared for those who love him." He will transform us beyond our own recognition. And he has started now. That's why I was saying in my answer to another question last night that we need to experience God, but true experience of God is not an external experience in which you see something happening to somebody else or you have some visionary experience that doesn't change you or do anything to you. Being a Christian is to be changed.
We have in Hong Kong right now started a series of Bible studies called the Transformation Series. Every week we go through the Bible studying the subject of transformation. The most amazing thing in serving God for me in all these years that keeps me going on is to see a person change before my eyes. There's nothing like it. You work in engineering, you can see change. Road surface changes. New buildings go up. Hong Kong is changing all the time. There's a new building here and a new building there. Some are nice, some are not so nice. But even in that kind of work we are trying to change things for the better. What do you think God wants to do? He's going to take us just like this? The whole point is that he can take a sinner and transform you into what the Bible calls a saint.
You don't have to worry. You don't suddenly have a neon light over your head. It's quite inconvenient. I can't sleep with a neon light on. A halo — you have to switch it off at night so you can sleep. You don't have to worry about it. Saint is an inner transformation. You become a new person. What kind of a new person? A person in the image of God. If you don't want to be transformed, if you like yourself as you are, Christianity has no message for you. You don't want to waste your time in church. Church has nothing to offer you. If you are happy with yourself, if you think you're such a wonderful person as you are, you don't want to be changed, you don't want to become a God-like person, you don't want to come to church. Go somewhere, play basketball, something else, do something more interesting. But if you see that you are not what you want to be, much less what God wants you to be, if you have a longing to experience God's power in your life, to make a different person out of you, then the gospel has something to say to you. Then there is good news. It can be done.
Plastic surgery is very popular these days in the United States. Unbelievable. Why? Because people want a new face. They don't like the face they have. They look in the mirror and say, "That's me? Every morning I have to look at this?" And I share the sympathy because I have the same feeling every morning. Full of sympathy for such people. Every morning I look in the mirror and I say, "That's me? God wants to look at a person like this? I don't even want to see me, and God has to look at me." Every morning I'm so tired of seeing myself in the mirror. It gets a little bit better by the time you've combed your hair. Only slight improvement. So, people don't like themselves. What do they do? They want to be changed. And so they go to the plastic surgeon and the plastic surgeon measures their nose. "This one's a bit short. You have to extend the nose a bit. The ears are too flapping forward. Okay, back a bit." So by the time the doctor's finished with you, you look in the mirror and you say, "Who's that?" You're changed. I don't know if you like the change, but at least you're changed. But the change is superficial. It's external. But when God goes to work — oh, the change is deep within. Amazing transformation.
All through the years I have looked at people and just seen how ugly people have become beautiful. With a beauty that will not fade away. You know, the movie stars, they really spend money on this. Every year when they get older, they have to stretch the skin. Too many wrinkles, so they have to pull it all back, tighten it up, put face packs on. Oh, they're very busy. I think the whole day is spent just trying to put their face in shape. But when God has gone to work in us, he can take the ungodly, the sinner, the ugly person, and make something beautiful. Is there anything more wonderful in the world than that?
I looked at some movie stars. I saw John Wayne just before he died, on TV, of course. I was looking for the news, and they came to some awards ceremony. I had a shock. He looked terrible. He was so thin and so frail, and you think of him as the he-man on the screen. The guns come out fast, punching, he knocks through the van door, the whole door falls down. Fantastic. And there was John Wayne, and then he came on the stage, and what did we see? Oh, pitiful, terrible. And then in the newspaper, two or three months later, he died of cancer. You see, everything is going down as far as the external man is concerned. You may be a good-looking person today. What will you be like in 10 years, 20 years? Are you going to try plastic surgery? Will you try to stretch your skin? Face packs? What are you going to do? But the beauty that God puts into us — that beauty, amazing, it gets better all the time. It gets more beautiful all the time. Because God continues his transforming power, until, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, we are transformed from one degree of glory to another. "Glory" means beauty, the same thing, but a spiritual beauty. From one degree of spiritual beauty to another — it's better all the time.
Friendship with God, and I'm stressing this point, is yes, God can hardly have much enjoyment out of us as we are now, but his joy is to make us more and more in character like himself. You know what the Bible has in store for Christians? You have to read it and you rub your eyes and see whether you read the right thing. 1 Corinthians 6, Paul says to the Corinthians, "Do you not know that we shall judge the angels?" Who? Angels? We always think of angels as beautiful, mighty beings, beings of supreme power. When they tried to arrest the Lord Jesus, you remember Peter — always Peter — he rushed out and pulled out his sword. He's a bold man. And there was the high priest's servant, the first one coming up. "You want to take my Lord? I'll show you something." Down came the sword, and the poor guy's ear went off. The Lord Jesus said, "Peter, put away your sword. You want to fight battles with that piece of metal? Do you know how many angels my Father would send to my rescue if I only asked him?" One angel can hold back an entire army. A few angels wiped out the entire army in the Old Testament. These are mighty beings, the likes of which no human weaponry would worry them at all. And we shall judge the angels? Has it ever sunk into your mind what that means? God will place us above the angels. Oh, we have no idea what God is going to do with us when he has finished transforming us.
I think we need to preach more about this. The glorious hope that the apostle Paul speaks about again and again. Because hardly ever do we speak about hope, so most Christians don't even know what is ahead of them. We have a busy task ahead — judging angels. There are lots of angels around. The Lord Jesus speaks of 72,000 angels or something like this. We are talking about myriads. In Revelation, hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of angels. We are going to be very busy judging angels at this rate. That is, if you and I will ever end up being God's friends. God is not going to entrust this kind of task, running his universe, to people who are not his friends. What kind of a mess are we going to make of the entire universe? We have made a mess on earth already. He is not going to have us make a mess of the heavens as well, is he?
God is going to make us into people who are going to enjoy fellowship with him and he enjoys fellowship with us. People who bear his image, who share his character, and that is what salvation is about. When you are saved, when you are baptized, that is the first step. He is going to begin his spiritual plastic surgery in your life. He is going to make you beautiful. Now that could be a little bit painful in the process, right? I mean, we never think of surgery as painless. At least we have not yet come to the stage where surgery is entirely painless. Sometimes in the process when God is changing us and transforming us, you say, "God, what are you doing to me? I don't like this experience. I'm very uncomfortable." "Be patient. I'm going to make something beautiful out of you." Why, when you became a Christian, suddenly you had so many enemies? Why did everybody treat you so badly? Why did everything go wrong when you became a Christian? The spiritual surgery has begun.
But God has few friends. I'm going to drum this theme in because that's in the Bible. God has few friends. I wonder, in this room today, more than a hundred people perhaps — how many of you would even dare to think of yourself as a friend of God? How many of us have any real experiential idea of what friendship with God is? Do you experience friendship with God? What is the hindrance? What is the problem to being a friend of God?
I'll try to sum this up in one word, because if we make it very complicated and so much analysis we can't remember what the problem was. There are problems, but I don't know what they are. If we don't know what the problem is, we cannot overcome it, right? We have to start with understanding the problem. And I will try to deal with the root problem. I'll put it in one word and I will call it: the radicalism of God's friendship. Don't be too frightened — radicalism. I don't even understand the word. You analyze the problem and I'm even worse off now. I use the word "radicalism" because I really can't think of another word. But let me explain a little bit what radicalism means.
Well, radical surgery means the removal, in surgery, of that entire thing that needs to be removed. It means it is an intensive, complete surgery. It does not say a partial removal of that particular thing that needs to be removed, but a complete removal. In politics, you speak of political radicals. That means, put in a bad word, it means extremist. But the radicals don't like to call themselves extremists because extremist has a bad sound to it. So you like to speak of being a radical — political radical, this or that. Radical simply means taking anything not in a partial way but to its absolute limit. Going all the way. No compromise. No holding two incompatible positions. Or trying to go what in Chinese philosophy is the middle way. Let me tell you that in the Bible there is no such thing as a middle way. There is no middle way. The Lord Jesus says, "He who is not with me is against me." There is no neutrality. No neutral zone that you can stand between the world and God. You are either in the world, on the world's side, or you are on God's side. There is no fence for you to sit on. There is only a chasm that goes straight down. You can't sit on any fence. There is no fence there. There is a big gulf in between, and you must decide which of these sides you are standing on. And if you have not decided, you have already decided, because you have to be on one of these anyway. A non-decision is a decision against God. That is what Jesus means: "He who is not with me is against me." You can't stand in the middle. You're either on that side or this side. There's no middle ground. Everybody in this room is already on one side or the other. You're either with God or you're against him.
You say, "No, I'm not against him." I'm sorry, there is no middle ground. If you're not against him, then you have to be on his side. Whether in the Old Testament or in the New, the gospel is extremely radical. Somebody said when they listened to my messages, "This preacher is very radical." Or if you don't like my preaching, you will say, "Very extreme." Amen, amen. I will immediately confess to that crime and I will not even withdraw from it.
A professor of physics once came to our church in Montreal. He sat down and he had the shock of his life. The message hit him like an Exocet missile, came straight at him. And he said he never wanted to come back to the church again. He said, "This preacher is too radical, too extreme, uncompromising." So he said to himself, "I am never going to go back to that church again, to be hit with another Exocet missile. This time I may never get up again. This time he got a few holes and he ran for it. But the next time he might sink completely." He said, "I am not going back to church again. No, no, no. No way." But God was merciful to him. As the next Sunday got closer, there was some power pulling him. "Go back." "But is he speaking the truth or not? If he is speaking the truth, I have to go, even if I don't like it. I have to go." You know what he did? He came back. Got a second dose. The next time, "No more, enough of this." And the third week he came back again. And the fourth week. And the fifth week. And he stayed with us. And I know the story because he told it to me himself. He told me exactly what he went through. He had been a Christian for years and years. In fact, he was a church leader in Taiwan. His wife was the pianist in our church. We thank the Lord for this dear couple. But it was not easy for them, not easy at all, because the gospel is so radical.
Now, that is the primary — let me say this is the primary hindrance to our friendship with God. We find that friendship with him is too radical. It's not that he demands too much. That wouldn't be so bad. He demands everything. I mean, he has no knowledge of moderation, does he? God doesn't know anything about moderation. He didn't study Chinese philosophy well enough. What did he say? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength." How many more "alls" are we going to go on? We run out of "alls." Everything you've got. Now that's radicalism. I preach the way I preach because I have no choice. If I didn't preach in this way, I wouldn't be true to the gospel. I shouldn't be in this job. I should not be serving God. I should go find myself another profession.
Because like you, all of us, and that's where the problem of friendship with God comes in: we want to de-radicalize the gospel. It is too demanding. "If any man will be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me." What? You're calling me to execution? I mean, this is radical. We got a cross here. There's nothing more radical than the cross, is there? There is nothing more radical in life than dying, is there? It is total. Have you ever heard of anyone dying partially? You're either alive or dead. There is no middle ground between death and life, is there? We may metaphorically speak of somebody as half dead — that's metaphorical. The crucifix — I was noticing hanging up there, our Roman Catholic brethren like crucifixes, to remind them, I hope. But they often forget. Our dear friends forget to be reminded of the radical nature of the gospel. The gospel is summed up in the cross. And there is nothing more radical than a cross. And it is this that the Lord Jesus says: "Take up your cross and come after me." That is, come to your execution with me. The cross — you might say, "Take up your electric chair and come with me. Take up your hangman's rope and come with me." The cross is simply an instrument of execution.
So you can see my problem, my dear friends. You may not like my preaching. But if you don't like my preaching, I guarantee you, you don't like Jesus' preaching either. I'm sure you don't like Paul's preaching either. This Paul is so radical, it's unbelievable. "I have suffered the loss of all things." Oh, that's already — you can stop there, right? And what does he go on to say? "I count them as rubbish." That's going too far. "I may have suffered the loss of all things and they're very valuable to me, but it's worth giving up anyway. But they're still very valuable to me." And what does he say? "I have suffered the loss of all things. I count them as rubbish." Not even worth talking about. That's really radical. "What for? That I may know him and fellowship with him, be conformed to his death." Slow down, please. "And share in his sufferings." I can't handle this anymore. "Fellowship in his sufferings, conformed to his death." This is too radical.
Some people — no wonder — unlike this professor that I mentioned who came to our church, who listened to my preaching once and said, "I have had enough. I'll go to another church. There I get comfort. I feel so good after the message. Every time I listen to this pastor, I come out, I almost need a pair of crutches. I can't walk anymore. My legs are too weak after this. I feel so bad inside. I came to church feeling good; I go away feeling bad. And who wants to go to church to feel bad?" You go to the Crystal Cathedral in California and there is Mr. Schuller preaching a wonderful gospel to you. Oh, he says, "You are all wonderful people. You are lovely people. God loves you just as you are. You don't need any change." Oh, you are just so wonderful. And he keeps telling you that you are so wonderful. You come out feeling so great. You went in five foot six inches, you came out six feet tall. You don't need any special surgery anymore. You are feeling so good. Of course, during the week you shrank again. The next week you go back and he stretches you out again, tells you what a wonderful person you are. "You are such lovely people. The best there is in all of the United States. In all of the world. Of course, other people don't understand you, but that's their fault. You are just lovely." So what do we need the gospel for? What do we need to be saved from? We only need to be saved from all those nasty people around us who don't understand us. "You can't see how beautiful I am? You can't see? You've got no eyes to see. That's your problem."
Isn't that the way honestly we feel? I'm sure you feel your colleagues — these people have no eyes, they're blind. Can't they see what a lovely person I am? Everybody knows how lovely I am. My parents also — they are blind. I do so much for them, they can't see. My children — everybody. The whole world is wrong. I am fine. That's the kind of message that's being preached: everything is alright with you. What's wrong is the world. Let's go out and evangelize them, change all those people so that they understand what wonderful people we are. What kind of gospel are we preaching?
Radicalism. We don't like the radicalism of the gospel. Because why? The radicalism of the gospel tells you: you are not nice. You are a sinner. "I didn't come here to be insulted. I will take you to court for calling me a sinner. That's called defamation, slander." "I don't say things like that about people anymore. You shouldn't preach the gospel in this way." The offense of the gospel lies in the cross. The great stumbling block is the cross. And why is the cross a stumbling block? Because it is so radical. It demands everything. And therefore we work to reduce the offense of the cross.
Preachers and evangelists — have you noticed when you listen to our friends the evangelists preaching — the cross is only something that Jesus bore. It's not something we have to bear. The cross is not an instrument to destroy sin in us. Jesus took all the sin away, and now we can all sit back and relax and have a good time. Can you discern with your ears messages that sound similar but in essence are very different? One message is entirely radical. The other is a message that has de-radicalized, reduced the radical content of the gospel. We take away the offense. Paul said that the gospel is an offense to the Jews, a stumbling block, and it is stupidity to the Greeks who thought they were so clever. Why is it so radical? Can we somehow reduce the radical nature?
I noticed from some of the questions that you asked: why does God want us to obey him? We find it offensive. He says he wants to be our friend, and then he says, "You will be my friend on condition that you obey everything I tell you." What kind of friendship is this? This is not equal friendship. I have to do all the listening and you do all the talking. You give all the commands. That radicalism — just remember that word. Obedience is something that is contrary to our nature. We don't like it. We don't like it even when God requires us to obey. Never mind when church leaders — who do they think they are? They tell me what to do? I've got enough of people telling me what to do. My boss is yelling at me every day. This guy tells me what to do, that guy tells me what to do. I get on the street and what do I see? Some traffic policeman telling me to go here when I don't want to go here. I'm trying to go right, you say "Road closed, go that way." How am I —
# Friendship with God
We can trace this element right through the Bible. Like Adam and Eve. What was the problem? They couldn't handle the radicalism. The garden is wonderful. The garden of Eden. They were put in paradise, as it's called. The garden of Eden. Beautiful garden. Everything you want you can have. Everything is there. But of the tree — of this tree in the garden you shall not eat. Oh, that's offensive. Every requirement, every demand is a challenge to our inner being. That is why radicalism is so repulsive to us. Friendship, yes. Obedience, no. All our kids here know that. Parents always telling us: blow your nose, comb your hair, wash your face, eat this, eat that, finish this. You see, you are facing radical demand all the time.
The teaching of the gospel is summed up in this very thing. A great German theologian wrote a book with this title: "Radical Obedience." To sum up the teaching of the Lord Jesus in just those words. It is radical obedience. Another American theologian has recently written a book called "Radical Commitment." In our church, we use a similar word called "Total Commitment." Because only total commitment is the adequate answer to total demand. That is the thing we must grasp. But it is offensive to us. But it is offensive to us, to our nature. Why is it offensive? Because we feel our sovereignty threatened. We love this word sovereignty, isn't it? Sovereignty. Oh, lovely. I am sovereign. I am master of my life. And here comes a command which threatens.
And it is very sad how deep this problem goes. Let me share with you something that is very painful to my heart, and has mystified me, puzzled me to this day. And it is not easy for me to talk about it. But I want to try to use this to illustrate this point to you. And it has to do with my relationship with my dear father. And even this morning, I was pondering and puzzling over this matter, and thinking whether I should share this with you or not, to try to illustrate how deep is the problem, the challenge that we feel whenever our sovereignty is brought into question by some competition or some command.
You know, my father and I had a very unique relationship. I think perhaps most parents and children have never enjoyed such a relationship. We talked together. We played together. We enjoyed each other's company, though for a very short time. Because he was a very busy man. He was a high government official in China. And duties of government, of course, kept him very busy. But whenever he could, we really enjoyed being together. Walking together. Chatting together. As friend with friend. I often forgot that he was my father. He probably forgot I was his son. We just played together. Enjoyed each other. We argued together, but in a friendly way. And we played chess together — Chinese chess, I guess. Which I didn't lose in three moves. Sometimes I won. Sometimes he won. At least we had long struggles over chess matches sometimes.
He used to joke with me, too. He used to say, when he lost the game, he would remind me that another governor used to play with his son. And every time the son won, he would say to his son, "The only thing you are good for is playing chess." But if his son lost, he would say to his son, "You can't even play chess." So whether he won or lost, there's not much good. We had really good times together. He taught me to box when I was quite small. He was a good boxer. He used to teach me how to punch and combination punches and things. We had good times together. I seldom managed to land a good punch on him. But if I did, he was a good sport. He accepted that very graciously. That was very nice of him. Of course, I was the one who got most of the punches. So it was a great relief when I could occasionally manage to land a good one on him. Of course, we did Western boxing with quite well-padded gloves so that we didn't do much injury to each other. But we enjoyed that.
We enjoyed good times together. We talked about the future. We did many things. And my father was very dear to me. I also respected him greatly. A man of tremendous integrity, honesty. A very good man. A man of principles who taught me to love righteousness, to love truth. And although there was so much corruption in the government in China, as all of you must know, he stood up against the corruption. He did not fear the opposition. He did not fear the opposition of powerful men, not even the opposition of the — some of you who know Chinese history, recent history, know the Si Da Jia Zu, the four powerful families. The Kong family and others. The four families who controlled so much of the finances that were related to the president and so on. He was a man of principle. His life was often in danger. And he was a deadly shot with his gun, too. He was his own best bodyguard. He didn't trust bodyguards. Because, as you know, in a corrupt country, you can buy the bodyguards. The bodyguards could be the very person to kill you. And that's what happened to Mrs. Gandhi, as you know, in India. She was shot by her own bodyguards. No, he didn't trust the bodyguards. He carried his own gun. And he was a deadly shot with that gun.
He trained me to use the gun, too. Because there was danger of kidnapping. So he would take me to the underground training chambers to target practice and so on. We had great times together. Great times. We even worked out a plan of defense, I remember, which was very interesting. That was because of the confusion with the communist takeover. We even looked at the house together and studied how we would fight from room to room if we were attacked by bandits or mostly soldiers who had gone astray. And I would hold this position and he would run to that room. He would fire from that position and I would rush to the next point and fire from that position. Wow, it was a real commando operation, this one. But we had wonderful times together because these are the things that bound our hearts together. We depended on each other. We trusted one another.
But as I grew older, something strange happened to this friendship. And this is what puzzled me. And I've tried to understand it all through the years and I still don't understand. But today, when talking about radicalism, I'm beginning to see a little bit of the reason for this. As I grew older, the friendship grew colder. It became harder and harder to communicate. At that time, I attributed it to the tensions that he had to face with the collapse of the nationalist government. But then, gradually, I began to realize the problem was much, much deeper than that.
And one day — and I didn't see it at the time, but later, as I thought about it and I put it together — one day, he mentioned to me that he had seen a fortune teller. We weren't Christians. I wasn't a Christian at the time. He was a sort of a nominal Christian. I wasn't a Christian at all. And it didn't strike me as strange at that time that a Christian goes to see a fortune teller. Christians don't see fortune tellers. That is contrary to the teaching of the Bible. It's strictly forbidden. But I didn't know that since I was not a Christian. It's only later as I thought about it. It's strange. How come my dad went to see a fortune teller? And he saw two or three very famous fortune tellers in Shanghai. People whose words were so solid that it could be written down and looked at later on. Most fortune tellers do not dare to write down what they predict. It never came to pass. It's rubbish you wrote here. But these kinds of fortune tellers dare to write down what they predicted.
And one day in a conversation it slipped out of him, I think somewhat accidentally, that the fortune teller had said to him, "Your son." He said, "What about my son?" I'm the only son in the family. No brothers and no sisters. "Your son is going to be a great man — greater than you." That is something you must never say to my father. That anybody is going to be greater than him would be dreadful. Not even his son should be greater. Maybe almost equal, but greater?
And you know the sad thing about it — the sad thing about it is that he took it seriously. At the time it slipped out of him, I took it as a joke. I mean, I don't believe in fortune tellers. I don't care who they are or how famous they are or whatever they write down. I'm not interested in any of this rubbish. He took it very seriously. And you know what happened? The relationship between us was destroyed through the fortune teller. Much to my sadness. Much to my sadness. I always loved my father. I couldn't understand why he became colder and colder. Why? Because he believed the fortune teller. He saw in me a threat to himself. A threat to his sovereignty and to his superiority. He saw in me, according to the fortune teller, a rival. And he became afraid of me. He, with all his ability, his tremendous intelligence, with two doctor's degrees behind his name, PhD, LitD. Why was he afraid of me? I wasn't even interested in his field.
But he knew I had military ambitions in my non-Christian days. Was that the reason he was afraid? Since he was in politics and I would be in the army, if I ever got to the army, I might be a threat to him. Who knows, I might take over, and he would be in charge of the government and I would take over. Maybe he was imagining something of this kind. But the strangest thing is, even after I became a Christian and gave up all my military ambitions, he still stayed away from me. I can't understand this. It cuts me to my heart like a knife. My father, whom I love — why don't you talk to me? Why don't you want to see me? What did I do to you? When did I ever do anything wrong to you?
And so this morning I was meditating and thinking: I have a little taste of what God feels towards us. God is saying, I want to be your friend. And we come up with all kinds of ideas. You really want to be my friend? I'm suspicious about this. I mean, you are God, you are so great, you surely don't want my friendship. If you want my friendship, there must be some ulterior motive. Something fishy behind that. So what is God going to do? So we stay away from him. Oh, you see, you want my friendship, but you say I have to obey you in everything? Ah, what kind of friendship is this? I knew there was something fishy going on here. Didn't you have that feeling in the Bible study when they said, "You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you." Fishy.
And I think my father thought, as he looked at the things I was doing, he was putting all this interpretation on things I was doing. I mentioned that he taught me to box and I became a fairly good boxer. I went on to further training in boxing. By that time he didn't want to fight with me, of course. But then he was puzzled that I also went into judo. And it seemed that he put all kinds of interpretations. Why is boxing not enough? Why do you want to go into judo? Well, you see, I was non-Christian in those days and I liked to do things very thoroughly. So I looked at boxing, Western boxing. I knew it was a good and effective way of defense. You remember Muhammad Ali challenged anybody to fight him. If they thought that karate or anything was superior to Western boxing, he said, you take me on. I will fight the best karate fighter there is. Western boxing against karate. You remember that part? Very interesting. He said he would go to Japan and fight anybody in Japan to prove that his skills are as good as any of the best they got.
But as I thought about boxing, I saw there was a weakness. So I tried to cover all the angles, and that's I think what worried my father. I always tried to do one thing more to outdo, and he thought in this case I was trying to outdo him. He knew only boxing. Now I would go boxing and judo. The reason — I never thought about him, of course. I never thought of fighting with my father. So what is he worried about? Maybe one day I could protect him better if he gets outnumbered. Now I saw the weakness of boxing was that boxing is a distance fighting. That means like karate, you have to stand back to fight. But if you tangle with a wrestler, you are finished. For example, if you are walking down the street and a good fighter jumps you from the back and grabs hold of you, you can't punch him. You can't hit him. You have to stand back to get an effective punch. But if you are close in, if he got you by the neck, if he got a bear hug on you, what are you going to do? You haven't got enough range to give an effective punch. So I tried to cover the deficiency of boxing by going into judo, which is a contact fighting, which means you know how to deal with somebody who holds on to you, whether from behind or in front or wherever. I had no motive of competing with my father at all. It was not even in my mind. But my father got suspicious. You see, he's always trying to go one step ahead of me. He's always trying to outdo me.
So only later when I thought about it, I began to see, why does he feel threatened by his own son? I have not the least intention to threaten him. I think in many ways he's superior to me. And I'm very happy about that. I'm happy that he's superior. I don't see him as a competition at all. The subjects he studied, I didn't study, so I would not compete with him in his field. He was an economist. His doctorate was in economics. Later on, when I became a Christian, I went into studies. I went into different subjects. I specialized in philosophy and literature, for example, of the Far East. It was a different subject. I couldn't compete with him in that area. And different from him is when I was offered the chance to do the doctorate in London, I declined. I was not interested in the doctorate. I wanted to go and study theology, so I turned down this chance to do the PhD. So he should have felt quite comfortable that he had two doctorates and I have none. I'm not competing with him. But he still feels threatened. I still don't understand this. What more can I do? I'm not in the same field. I don't go for the same attainments. Why are you threatened?
And the saddest thing, which I think I mentioned to some co-workers at one time, which was almost the final blow to my heart, was when my mother was ill and suffering from tuberculosis. I would go and visit her from time to time in Switzerland. And one year I took out time to go and visit my mother, going from England to Switzerland. My father came from Portugal where he was finishing a book that he was writing. And you know, when he heard from my mother I was arriving the next day, he left the day before so that he wouldn't see me. I think it was like a knife to my heart. And when I arrived to see my mother, my mother said to me, "You know, your father left yesterday because he heard you are coming today." I couldn't take it. Could you take that? Could you stand there? What have I ever done wrong to my father? What did I do? When he was in Portugal doing his research project, I wrote to him and said, "Dad, can I come to see you? We can talk face to face. If there's any misunderstanding, let's sort it out. Can I come to see you, please? At my own expense." You know, I went through my studies without my father's financial support. I didn't get support from him. And when he later on, almost towards the end, offered me support, I felt it was very hard for me to take it by then. I said, "Can I come and talk to you?" No. The answer was no. He didn't want to talk to me.
I began to understand God's heart. He wants to be our friend. He wants to talk to us. He says, what wrong have I done to you? And yet we blame him for this and that. Why did you create a world full of sin? And now I'm a sinner because of that. It's all your fault. Now you accuse me of being a sinner, but I didn't make the world, you made the world. You made a world full of sin and all these nasty people around me, and now you blame me for being like them. We find a thousand and one reasons for de-radicalizing. You have no right to ask me to obey you completely, because so much of the problems is because of you, not because of me. And now you even want to make a radical demand on me, that I can only be your friend if I obey you completely.
We cannot see that it is for our own good because we don't know the way we are going. Suppose you are lost in the jungle in Malaysia and you don't know where you are. Here you look, there is a big python coming down. There you saw some guerrilla going around with an M16 or whatever they carried down there. Very dangerous. You don't know which way to go. Danger all around. And suddenly somebody comes along who is an expert. He knows the jungle like the palm of his hand. He said, "You want me to take you out?" "Yes, please, please, please." "You want me to be your guide?" "Yes, please, please." "Then you have to do exactly as I tell you what to do." What kind of a guide is this? What kind of a guide? Now you're in total demand on me. Everything. If I say don't cough, you don't cough. Don't blow your nose, you don't blow your nose. If I say jump, you jump. If I say drop flat on the ground, you drop flat on the ground. This guy is unreasonable. I mean, all right, you want to do me a kindness, you want to be my guide, that's fine, that's nice, right? But don't take it too far. I've got some dignity left, you know? If he says, if I tell you to rub mud on your face, you rub mud on your face. What is this?
Of course, we don't realize. I mean, you saw soldiers put black dirt on their face, right? For their protection, camouflage, right? So if he tells you to do something, you may not understand why he tells you to do it, but he tells you to do it for your own good. But we don't have that confidence in God, do we? We don't have the confidence that every command he gives us is for our good. We don't have that confidence. That is the reason why we resent it. We think that our sovereignty is being threatened by his command. But if the guide doesn't do that — if he tells you to drop flat right away, you don't obey his command, you might be shot dead. You see, we've got to understand that the commands are not for God's good. It's not because he is so bored, he has nothing to do in heaven, that he enjoys shouting commands to you. The commands, every command, is to save us. It's for our good. If you can only understand this: the commands are the concrete expression of his love and his friendship. The only way he's going to get us out of this mess is if we obey every command absolutely, radically, no compromise. If he says drop, you drop. Every soldier understands that. But we don't understand why God makes this kind of demands on us. We find it offensive, we complain, we murmur. So many commands. Love one another. Look at this guy, who wants to love him? You get me some decent fellow, and I'll love him. The kind of people — who wants to love? Love each other. Love everybody. We can be reasonable. There are one or two people you say, love this one I can love. Everybody? We've got to be a little discriminating. We've got to choose our friends. That's what the world teaches us. But God says, everyone, because that's what I do. Oh, the radical nature is so offensive.
Some people have said that what distinguishes a religious sect from the orthodox position is radicalism. If that's the case, then what we have got in the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of Paul and the whole Bible is sect: love God with all your being. The truth of the matter is that's not true. The sects are not radical. They, like all other people, have de-radicalized the gospel. Sin is de-radicalization or contra-radicalization. There are two words we should remember — rather, three words: radicalization, de-radicalization, contra-radicalization. That's all in the Bible passage that you studied in Revelation chapter 3 on the Laodicean church. It's all there. To be hot is radical. To be cold is contra-radical, the opposite of being hot. To be lukewarm is to be de-radical. Going from hot to cold. Coming down. And all through the history of the church we have de-radicalization or contra-radicalization.
The sects that we have today — look at their teaching. The Seventh-day Adventists tell us we should keep the Sabbath day. They want to take us back into the Old Testament under the law. They have de-radicalized the cross. You are now saved partially by the cross and partially by keeping the Sabbath day in Seventh-day Adventism. You look at any of the other teachings, they are all de-radicalized. The radical element has come out of them. There is no truth in the statement.
And there is contra-radicalization. I read in the newspaper just the other day, in fact yesterday — Seremban, this is a Malaysian paper — Seremban, I don't even know quite where it is. It's about this lady, this girl, who took weed killer, weed poison, killed herself. The tragedy of it is a very radical solution. Suicide is a radical solution to a problem. But the tragedy is that when she was examined, it was found that she had a baby six months old in her stomach. Her radical solution to her problem — and we don't have to go into her problem — the radical solution was to kill both herself and her baby. If she wants to kill herself, at least let the baby be born, right? But she went and killed both of them at the same time.
That means there are two kinds of radicalism. God's radicalism and man's radicalism. And there is in the sects a certain kind of human radicalism. We must distinguish between these. And man's radicalism is what constitutes what I've called contra-radicalism. It is the rejection of God's right over my life, and I can do with my life what I want, including kill myself, kill my baby, kill my husband, kill my parents, which I've been reading about in North America. Kill everybody. And in the end, go out with your gun and shoot everybody in McDonald's. Throw hand grenades, shoot everybody in sight. I got a bit worried the other day in Australia. In Melbourne there was some guy going around shooting everybody. Every car that went by, he just shot them down. The next car came and he shot them down. All the cars piled up and people were killed. What for? He doesn't even know these people. I got worried because we have co-workers in Melbourne and we have brothers and sisters in Melbourne, and I was hoping that none of our people got shot by some fellow who went around killing everybody. It is simply sheer madness and rebellion. That is contra-radicalism. Man's radicalism is opposite to God's radicalism.
Our time is gone. We have to close. Are you prepared for friendship with God? Are you willing to submit unconditionally, without feeling threatened in yourself, without withdrawing from God, without being afraid of God's love as suffocating you, seizing you? Let me say it quite simply as we close. Unless you say, Lord, I accept your radicalism. I accept your sovereignty. I accept your kingship unconditionally. If you ask me to drop dead, I drop dead. But he wouldn't ask you to do that. That's the word. If you ask me to do this, I will do it. And then you know what? Instead of feeling bound by that radicalism, for the first time you enjoy true freedom. That's the mystery. He that humbles himself, the Scripture says, I will exalt. When you try to obey him absolutely, he makes a king out of you. He will put you over the angels. We are called to reign with him. That's what you read in Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 2. He wants to make us priests and kings. The Lord Jesus is the example of that. He humbled himself to the lowest position. He obeyed absolutely. He submitted absolutely to the radicalism of his Father. And what do we read in Philippians chapter 2? That God raised him up highest over all. He gave him a name above every name. God's love. It is only when we obey absolutely that we have absolute freedom. When we obey absolutely, we will enjoy friendship with God. Can you take this message? No or yes? That is your decision. But if you try to water down this message, if you try to resist or reject or minimize God's sovereignty over your life and my life, you will find you will never have friendship with God. Why does God have so few friends? I hope you understand the answer to that question now. We always feel threatened by God's total demand, by his radical demand, because we don't understand that it is a demand of radical love, absolute, self-giving, unconditional love.
Let us pray.