Living Toward God Series

Journeying with John - JWJ-02

Living Toward God

John 1:1-2

This morning I want to talk with you from the Word of God about one of the most profound topics that has the power to revolutionize your life. If you will take the truth we are going to talk about this morning and wrap your life around it, order your living according to it, establish your priorities from it you will never be the same again. If you do not have a life mission statement - this is it right here.

Please open your bibles with me to the gospel of John and the first chapter as we pick up our second message in a dynamic series we just started last week, “Journeying with John - It’s a Trip.”

Last week we looked at one of most intense concepts of God as we started our journey looking at just the first four words of this Gospel, “In the beginning was . . .” Psalm 90:2 teaches us that ‘God is from everlasting to everlasting.’ ‘Everlasting to everlasting,’ if you unpack the Hebrew literally means from ‘always’ in one direction to ‘always’ in the other, from ‘beyond the vanishing point’ in one direction to ‘beyond the vanishing point’ in the other, from ‘time out of mind’ in one direction to ‘time out of mind’ in the other.

Then, and this is huge, then the Bible says in Ecc. 3:11 that God has put eternity in the hearts of man. We discovered together that the word for ‘eternity’ used in this verse is exactly the same word that Psalm 90:2 uses when it says that God is from ‘ever lasting’ to ‘ever lasting.’ In other words, and this lays the foundation for what we are going to look at this morning, the same ‘always’ that is in God, the same ‘beyond vanishing point’ that is in God, the same ‘from time out of mind’ that is in God, He put in you and in me and in all mankind whoever walked the face of this earth.

That is why AW Tower says, "There is something in the heart of man that reaches undeniably into eternity . . . Man wants to burst though the limitations of his mortality and grasp something that is divine."

Well let’s pick it up where we left it off.

John 1-1-2 - Read - Pray

This morning I want to speak with you profoundly yet simply about “Living Toward God.” Let me show you that from our passage. You miss it in the English. Translated literally out of the Greek our passage says this. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning toward God.”. It may not strike you at first but this may yet be the most profound statement in the entire Bible that describes Jesus relationship and interaction with the Trinity for the duration of eternity. Twice in these two short verses the Bible says something it says nowhere else and yet is so incredibly rich that it could change the way we live. Yet somehow it got lost in the translation. The state of Jesus Christ in the unity and tranquility of the trinity, in the unending and intertwining corridors of eternity, in the immeasurable eons before and after time is this - Jesus was toward God. That defines both His eternal position and disposition in His relationship with the Trinity. That profoundly and precisely describes the organizing and ordering principle of His life when He walked the face of this earth. Not only that but it accurately describes how you and I as God’s children will spend eternity. And it ought to describe the way you and I live our lives here on earth.

Seeing that it is so powerful a concept I thought it might be helpful for us to stop this morning and look at this together - Living Toward God. What does that mean? What does it look like?

Well I am glad you asked. So what does it look like when you are living toward God? Are you ready - please record these in your sermon notes?

When you live toward God . . .

1. You Live to Please Him

In other words, you make the pleasure of God your immediate and ultimate goal. Our challenge is that the flesh wants you to live to please it. And it is relentless. My friend, unless you make up your mind to live toward God, to live to please God the distractions and the demands of the flesh will be your undoing.

"The ultimate choice of the Christian life is always the choice between pleasing self and pleasing God." Martin Lloyd Jones

God does not want you to please Him because it somehow authenticates Him, somehow props up His divine ego. He is authenticated without you or me. He wants us to live to please Him because His pleasure is the best plan, purpose and provision for our lives.