Loving God With Our Whole Heart Series

Loving God with Our Whole Heart

Series: First Love: Forming Our Love for God

Brad Bailey – April 2, 2023

[The following was not all stated when shared publicly due to the limits of both time and general nature of only developing notes as a form of preparation which I neither memorize nor read… but seek to follow in thought.]

INTRO

I am especially glad you’re here today...or watching online.

This morning… God is placing the ultimate proposal before each of us. As we come to the conclusion of our series on forming our love for God as our “first love”...I invite to hear the proposal Jesus makes to his lead disciple Peter… and to know that it is the proposal he says he has come to place before each of us.

He asks the question: Do you love me?

Jesus said, "...Do you truly love me?" (John 21:16)

For some of us… you may not be ready to respond… but it is time to hear these words… and understand the choice that is at hand. For some… it is time to hear these words and give your life by saying ‘yes.’ For some… like Peter, these words offer an opportunity to reaffirm and renew of vows.

[ PRAYER: God, we want to open our hearts to your invitation today…]

As we come to this climatic proposal from Jesus… I want to help us stand back for a moment and see the big picture of what is really at hand.

The whole of the Bible...particularly the New Testament... is not a set of religious rituals or rules...but the reality of lives meeting Jesus...and ultimately of humanity meeting with God...and being reconciled with God through Jesus.

The disciples were never choosing a religion in the way we often think of it. There were plenty of religious leaders and Jesus certainly wasn’t like one of them. In fact, the very way which Jesus is experienced, was that he was spoke with an authority unlike any of the religious teachers. (Matthew 7:29, cf John 8:2, 14:10, 16:3) Along the way, Peter would be the one to say, ‘where else can we go, you have the words of ETERNAL life.’ (John 6:68)

The whole story that God reveals and is captured in the accounts of Scripture…begins by revealing that life as we know it has been separated from it’s source... and what is involved in reaching that life again.

We’ve become characters outside the true story… each of our lives have a semblance of story but cut off from relationship to the real drama at hand.

We can study the stage… and try to figure out the story… but without the author and script… we have lost our place and purpose in existence. Jesus comes doing nothing less than restoring lives to life. This sense of being part of something more transcendent may be a rather difficult thing to grasp because we simply can’t easily grasp what is beyond us… we are so cut off from the world of the author we left.

We chose to leave the story believing we could write our own... only there is no other story… and there is no other author.

Only he can work us back into the script. That is what Jesus comes to do. In this sense Jesus comes as the author entering the set. He is the one who can call us from outside ourselves…and from outside the whole of this lost story. That is why he enters the human story unlike any….

God begins to develop a story of redemption…of calling out a people to himself… and of the cost and sacrifice that such a process of redemption will involve…ultimately involving one who be sent like no other… not simply raised up from the created realm… but one coming from the heavenly eternal realm.

So Jesus enters as the one sent from outside… as the prophets had told of… and when the time comes he begins to declare who the true Author is and how He is working to restore lives into life.

He has come to bring that sovereign reigning power to bear… this is what he taught… this is what he enacted. Those first to follow… amazed… confounded… and then saw the sobering and sacrificial love that such redemption involves. They saw him overcome the separation between a world separated from it’s eternal source… as he was crucified… and then rose to life.

Now he meets them to settle that calling to find life again in him… in following him.

As we’ll see… he brings home what that means for those who first knew him… and for us.

Why? Because it was time to settle their relationship.

Especially true for one whose name was Peter.

If you are less familiar .... Peter is.... the very first disciple called on by Jesus, followed closely by Peter’s brother Andrew, then James and John.