God's Table: The Pursuing Host

Welcome to the Table explores the radical hospitality at the heart of the Christian faith through the lens of two tables; the Lord's Table and the ordinary hospitality table of home and neighborhood. Beginning with God himself as the original pursuing host, the series moves through the covenant welcome of Mephibosheth, the table-fellowship scandal of Jesus, the contrast between cold religion and lavish grace in Simon's dinner, and the multiplying power of the early church's daily breaking of bread, eventually culminating in the eschatological feast of Revelation, where the entire arc of redemption ends at a table.

The driving conviction throughout is simple: every hospitality table is a rehearsal for the Lord's Table, and the Lord's Table sends us back to our hospitality tables with new purpose. As such, building an invitational culture is not a church growth strategy, it is a theological imperative rooted in the very character of God.

Transcript

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Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stamford, Connecticut. The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

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The Old Testament lesson for today is from Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 through 10. This can be found on page 3 of your Pew Bible. God meets us in our need and provides for us even when we are suffering the consequences of our own sin. A reading from Genesis chapter 3, beginning with the first verse. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired, to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. When the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked and I hid myself. May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.

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At first glance, when we think we've done something that is irreconcilable, where God will reject us, that's when he does the exact opposite. When I look back at my testimony and my story, it's now clear to me that when God created me, even though I misused the two feet he gave me to run as far away from him as possible, he felt I was worthy enough, worthy enough to be around. And so he pursued me. And that's what Genesis chapter 3 is all about. In the past two years, I've been training myself to ask better questions when reading the scriptures. This is a Jewish book, and it's a Jewish style of literature, and in a Jewish style of literature, they beg for questions. A good Bible study helps us to answer those questions and get to the bottom layers of where the truth of life is. In this particular passage, there's a host of theological questions that need to be answered. Things that don't seem to make sense on the surface, but when we dig deeper, they actually reveal the character of God. Here's a few questions that I have. If God is a spirit and not a man, why would he be walking? Just a few questions. If God is all-knowing, why would he be searching for Adam asking, Where are you? And why is the writer of Genesis talking so much about Adam and Eve being naked? It seems like he's obsessed with that fact. So let's look at problem one. Genesis 3.8 says, and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking. Well, one critical attribute that makes God God is the fact that God is not a man, he's a spirit. John 4.24 says, God is a spirit, and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and in truth. You read your Bible, good. Colossians 1.15 calls God the invisible God. So if God is a spirit, how is it that he's walking in the cool of the day on two feet through a garden in the form of what appears to be human? God doesn't need to walk and he does not need legs. Yet God is revealing his own character and his desire to be with us by the fact that he's walking on two legs. And here's my first point. God will go out of his supernatural way to ensure that we can enjoy his presence. God will go out of his supernatural way to ensure that we can enjoy his presence. The Hebrew word there for cool actually is the word ruach, and it usually describes the spirit of God, right? The breath of God, the wind of God. And if you were to try to translate in English, it's kind of difficult. It's like saying God was walking in the wind as wind. It's hard to really translate. But God is not a man, right? So what it appears the writer is actually saying is that God is willing to supernaturally alter the way he presents himself just so he can appear to us in a way that can be processed by the human mind. Just so he does not invoke fear, just so he can actually invite community. I don't like wearing suits. Some people can throw on a suit every day, they roll out of bed, throw on a suit, and they feel good. Me, I don't. I feel like I'm in jail when I'm doing it. But look at me. You know, most relationships, if not all, they're similar to dating because we want to put our best foot forward. We want to impress. So many of us would love to throw on afhleisure wear every single day, but we don't. We grab the suit, we grab the dress, we put on a tie, we put on some nice heels, maybe a nice watch, even. We want to impress. So in Genesis chapter 3, when God comes to meet Adam and Eve in the garden in the form of a human, it automatically shows that God's original intent for humanity was to put his best foot forward. In fact, I would argue that God's best impression on humanity is Jesus. That's the ultimate act of pursuit. Hebrews 1:3 says this Jesus is the exact imprint or impression of God's nature. Jesus is an imprint of God's community. Jesus is an imprint of God's character. And Emmanuel, which is another name for Jesus, that means God with us, it wasn't just for Christmas time. God wants to be with us all the time. The first impression God wanted to make on us is that he is a God who pursues and that he will go out of his supernatural way to ensure that we can enjoy his presence. Well, you might say, Jelani, I don't get it yet. I don't think that's enough to help me not see God as a judgment God who does the opposite of blame, shaming, and that doesn't really help me as much because I still feel bad when I sin. And I don't always see the mercy of God in the scriptures. That's a fair concern. I can relate to that. And I think that brings us to problem two. If God is all-knowing, then why would he be searching for Adam and Eve since he likely already knows where they are and what exactly they're doing? Genesis 3 9 says this. Isaiah 40 describes it this way in verse 28. It says that Yahweh's understanding cannot be fully searched out nor measured. You'll never find out everything God knows, and you'll never know how much he actually knows. Psalm 139 says this God knows when we sit, when we rise, and what we're thinking before we even speak it. Therefore, if God already knows where Adam is, what is the Lord really asking when he says, Where are you? Well, the Hebrew context uses a phrase, aye. Aye. And the context of that phrase and the way the writer uses at that time makes it clear that that's a rhetorical question. It's not meant to be answered. And that leads me to my second point. God is looking for you even when you stop looking for him. God is looking for you even when you stop looking for him. The word used for walking there implies bilateral movement. Not just two legs walking at the same time, but two things walking at the same time. It's multiple things moving together. God doesn't need to walk, we know that. And God doesn't need exercise. We do. It's almost as if God coming down in a human form in the garden was something that he did regularly to commune with his creation. And he expected them to be present when he showed up. God's all-knowingness tells us that Adam and Eve, when they sinned, God knew exactly when it happened. And he still showed up for his appointment with them anyway. God knew when Adam and Eve sinned right as it happened, and he still showed up for his appointment with them anyway. There's a rabbinical view of this text, and it's explained well by an organization named Aleph Beda, who gives some of these reviews on parts of the Torah, and it says this in their review of it. God is inviting Adam and Eve to join him on his stroll as if to say, Hey, I know you ate from the tree. Come walk with me. Let's talk about it. God's invitation suggests that even in the aftermath of sin, even after we're disobeying him in his word, we still could be close to him. We still could walk with him. We still could connect with him. Purely because of his pursuit of us, based on his character, not our actions. God is looking for you even when you stop looking for him. But how did Adam and Eve respond? The way most of us do. The fear gets the best of them, and they decline the invitation. I have a small table thingy, like on the, you know, when you walk in your garage, a little table where we take everything out of our pockets and we put it there as soon as we get inside. Most of us in the house do it. Who has keys, and that's what I call a headache prevention. I don't want to be late, time management table. So you can imagine. It's a special frustration to me when I go to a designated spot that I have created for something I own, I open the door, and the key is not there. That's the Hebrew meaning behind the question he asks Adam. Where are you? Spiritual warfare lesson number one. I'm just gonna put this as an aside. Begin to identify when you're making decisions based on shame. If you want to run and hide right after you make a bad decision, that's shame trying to govern your future. If you want to run and hide right after you do something wrong, that's shame trying to govern not just a moment, your future. We should expose the wrong that we've done. We bring it to the light. Light kills shame and it brings freedom. Shame gives birth to shame through hiding. My old pastor used to say, God will never condemn you in order to shame you, but he will convict you in order to change you. God will never condemn you in order to shame you, but he will convict you in order to change you. Today, I believe God is pursuing us to the point that everything we've tried, every mistake that we've made, and everywhere we've run to, no matter how far, is the distance the Lord would gladly travel to get to us. David knew this when he wrote one Psalm 139, which as I studied it, is a wonderful picture of God's pursuit of us. He says, This I can never escape from your spirit. I can never get away from your presence. If I go up to heaven, you're there. If I go down to the grave, you're there. If I dwell in the farthest ocean, even your hand will guide me. Even in darkness I cannot hide from you, God. God is looking for us. Even when you stop looking for him. And here's the final problem. Why in the world is the writer of Genesis talking so much about Adam and Eve being naked? What's the point of that? What's the purpose that the nakedness serves? Genesis 2.24. The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Genesis 3 7. After Eve and Adam ate the fruit, their eyes were opened, and they knew they were naked. So now we know that they were naked, but they had no idea that they were naked. Genesis 3 9. The Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. Naked, naked, naked, naked, naked. Well, if we look at the second naked in verse 7, and the events that follow in verse 8, we see the character of God emerge from the text in his perfect timing. Verses 7 and 8 say this. Then the eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking. Right after. What timing? As soon as they sin and try to cover it up, God shows up on the scene. As soon as we do something that we ain't supposed to be doing, boom, conviction. God's intent is to meet you and hear me. God's intent is to meet you when you feel most ashamed. God's intent is to meet you when you feel most ashamed. He loves to present himself right when you need him most. That's what conviction is. It's an internal doorbell telling you you need to bring this to the Lord. That's conviction. God's intention is to meet you when you feel most ashamed. The Lord doesn't react the way you would expect him to react. Actually, I think if God showed up in thunder and lightning and started smiting everyone, because that's how we see God. Boom, boom, you die, you die. For real. But if he showed up that way, it probably would, you know, prove the preconceived notions that we already have about God and it probably would push us further away. Instead, God just shows up asking a multitude of questions. And then he goes for intimacy and conversation. He assesses the situation. There's a conversation that happens. He applies discipline. He does then what he always intended to do from the beginning. He removes our shame, and he removes our shame, that's a shame-based covering, and he makes us a new covering from his own hand. After God issues judgment to Satan first, then to Eve, and then to Adam. Down in verse 21, and this is in a part of the allotted verses, but here's what happens: it says in verse 21, chapter 3, and the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin, and he clothed them. The Lord God took garments of skin. Did he use the sewing machine, you think? No, it wasn't created yet. And he found a way to cover them. When they cover their shame and hide, God pursues them and recovers them by his hand. He covers their shame. He does remove them from the garden, but some scholars even argue that God shortening the lifespan of Adam and Eve is actually a grace to them. Because otherwise they would forever have to live with the shame that they brought upon themselves. And God then continues with the plan of redemption to remove shame forever and anchor us in communion forever through the blood of Jesus. Then that scripture, the one scripture that calls him I love, it says that God is the um that Jesus is the mediator between God and man. I had a dear friend named Mark named Mark Schein. He is a good friend of mine to this day. Mark Schein was his stage name. Mark used to play all over New York City. Wonderful voice, sound like Bob Marley, gifted musician. And I met Mark at the time where I was running really far from God. You know, God was chasing me, and every time he would get close, I would do some counterintelligence. I would dip away from him. At this point, I'm living a musician's lifestyle in New York, and you know what that means. I was broke. I dropped out of college, and I was smoking marijuana daily, multiple times a day. Cliff already outed me, so I might as well go for it. Thank you, Pastor Cliff, for coming. So Mark invites my band to play down. I was in a band called Innervibe, and we used to play all, you know, he would invite us to overseas. He would invite us to play at multiple venues in New York. And this time he invited us to play at a venue in Greenwich Village where he had a residency for a few weeks, and there was we were slotted to play multiple times. And this place is called the Village Underground. You know, I turn around and I invite one friend because I wanted to show off. And then we also had the entire band come. So we head down there, load up in a car, leave from Rockland County, head down there, park, get out, have a wonderful rehearsal time. We're feeling charged up. We play the first set, we smash it, went crazy. Beautiful, beautiful time playing with some great musicians. And of course, because I was an addiction, I felt I had to take this time to smoke. So I left the venue without Mark knowing, took the whole band, and we tried to go around the corner in New York City in the early 2000s, by the way, just to show you how not smart I was. And I found an open courtyard, and we started walking around that courtyard and started to smoke. Little did I know that that was the courtyard for NYU campus. All of a sudden, um, you know, plainclothes police officers surrounded us, uh, made us line up in a line, uh, went down a row, searched everyone. And the police officer, there was uh several police officers, you wouldn't even have never known that there were police officers. And they get to me at the end, and a woman police officer looks at me and she says, You, get out of here. I'm like, Me. Go, get out of here. Now I'm naked. I'm in shame. I gotta walk back to the venue. I have to tell the venue, the manager, I have to tell Mark Schein to his face, and I gotta tell my manager, my music manager, who just drives casually up right after this happened, full of excitement to see us play, and tell him, man, I don't know what to say, but everybody literally got arrested there at one police plaza, which is the headquarters of the police station in New York. Like, how crazy is this? And we can't play the second set. Naked. Shame. God used that moment to speak to me. Not meeting the obligation was terrible. But getting off while everyone else was arrested was worse to me. It was God saying, Jelani, if you continue down this road, you're going to hurt everyone around you. I've made you a leader, and you're leading people astray. That's how the pursuit of God can look in our lives. God showed me that when sometimes we're most ashamed, we can negatively use the influence that God has given us when really he wants to use our influence for his glory and for the freedom of many. Isaiah 59, 1 says this. Listen, the Lord's arm is not too weak to save you, nor his ear too deaf to hear you. You know why? Because he's always pursuing after us, and he's always near, even when you think he's far. So call him. Call him when you're drunk. Call him. Call him when you just yelled at someone in anger and you've lost control. Call him when your greed has gotten the best of you. Call him when you just watch pornography. And you've done the thing that you feel the distance of God and the chasm between you and him is just getting wider and wider. It's at that moment you call him. Did you know that shame cannot live around Jesus? So call Jesus. Ask him to come around. Jesus is the light of this world, and we need light to expose the darkness inside of us and then defeat the power of shame. That's why the Lord is pursuing you. So stop, turn around, and embrace the chase. In the next few moments, we're gonna step into a song called Out of Hiding. A powerful song that's a reminder and also permission for us to seek the Lord. For some, it's a reminder that I made the right decision when I turned around and I began to pursue Jesus. For others, there are things right now that are under the cover, under the bed, in hiding, and God wants to allow to rise to the surface. And for some of us, God is calling us to pursue others on behalf of Him. Take this moment to hear from the Lord as we reflect and see what He's calling to come out of hiding in you.

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