Relationships Are Everything
Fellowship with God
Mark 12:29-31
How many of you have ever been to a Borders book store? A few weeks ago, I was at the Pittsburgh Mills Mall, so I decided to go into Borders to look for a book. I was amazed as I walked through the aisles of seemingly endless selections. There were books having to do with any number of subjects. Then, in the back corner, I found a small section containing Bibles. I did not think much of it then, but it got me to thinking later. If Bibles did no have their own section, where would they have been?
At first, this was a passing thought, but I really started thinking about it as the days went by. Where would the Bible fit in the scheme of categories at the book store? I started thinking about where it would not fit. In my heart, I know the book is the truth, so it was easy to cross off the fiction section. I also was able to eliminate the magazine, newspaper, music, and movie section due to the fact that the Bible is a book and not one o these types of media. I then came to the cooking section. Even though there is much mention of food and even some hint of how to prepare it for sacrifice, it did not seem to fit into this category since there were no recipes for manna or the like. After this, things seemed to get more and more difficult because the Bible seemed to pertain to them.
I came across the history section and thought that the Bible would be a great fit here until I realized that some of the things of the Bible are yet to come, so it was not an exact fit here either. It seemed even easier to place it in the religion section until I thought about what Jesus had to say about the religious people of his day. I thought he may get a little jealous there being around the writings of other so-called gods as well. In the back of the store, there was a great selection of children’s books. Maybe the Bible belonged here. After all, there are great stories in there that we always heard as kids. But, there are also many stories we need as adults too, so I crossed this off of my list. Then, I saw the self-help section and thought this would be a great fit as well. After all, if Jesus can’t help someone with their problems, who can? At the time, I felt good and then uneasy about placing the Bible here. Is that all the Bible is? Is it just a really good self-help book? I began to think of all the times that I have used it in this way. If I have a problem, one of the first things I do is look to the Scripture for help and guidance. When I find the answer, I go about on my merry way. This seemed like a perfect fit, so I left it alone.
Later in the week as I was reading, I began to get convicted about placing the Bible in the self-help section. Even though it could be used in this fashion, it felt like there was so much more to it than just helping people. What could it be? I began thinking over the bookstore again and came to a section I had quickly passed over earlier. Next to the fiction section, there was a section about relationships. It had books on parenting, getting along with other people, dating and the like. As I began to think hard, I wondered if the Bible would fit in well here. I think it does, and we will be taking the next few weeks to see why I think the Bible is all about relationships. And, when we have relationships, then we are able to have fellowship. This morning, we are going to look at the first type of fellowship we should have. We should have fellowship with God.
I want you to turn with me this morning to the book of Mark, chapter 12. In this book, a teacher of the law came to Jesus. He was an educated man who knew the Law of the Old Testament. He knew all of the things that have been commanded by God to the people of Israel. However, he wants to get to the point with the man who knows the answers. He wants to Jesus to sum up the entire law by stating what the most important parts are of it. Jesus responds to the man in verse 29.
“The most important one”, answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this; ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
As Jesus recants the law that encompasses numerous books of the Old Testament, he sums it up in two statements. Isn’t it odd that they both have to do with relationships? Or, it might not be odd it all. He could be saying these things because relationships are the most important part of the Bible and our whole Christian walk. In short, relationships are everything, and our most important relationship is the one we have with God. This morning, I want to take a look at three truths in the Scripture that we must comprehend if we wish to enter into fellowship with the Lord. Before we do though, let’s look to the Lord in prayer.
Truth #1: We were created to have fellowship with God.
I want you to think back with me to the Garden of Eden before the fall of man. What are some things you think of? You might think of the lush surroundings, the different vegetation, or the creation of Eve, but do you know what is mentioned the most in this account in Genesis 2 and 3? The most mentioned fact about life before sin was that Adam and Eve walked around naked. Here is Donald Miller’s take on this passage in his book “Searching for God Knows What”.
When you’re naked, all you are thinking about is the fact that you’re naked. If you go to the grocery store to get some barbecue sauce and you don’t have on any clothes, chances are you aren’t going to stand around looking for the barbecue sauce that’s on sale, you’re just going to grab the first bottle and get out of there on the account of the fact you’re naked. You aren’t going to get a price check or go look to see if they have a new flavor of ice cream. I know that sounds funny, but if you were to walk into the Garden of Eden, you would probably freak out Adam and Eve because they would think you had colorful skin made out of cotton and they wouldn’t have any idea that you were really a human with clothes on because, like Moses said, they were naked and weren’t ashamed. The idea of clothes had never crossed their minds. And I know you think I am immature by bringing this up, but the thing is, Moses repeated this idea five times. In just one hundred words used to describe Paradise and the Fall, the main thing he said, again and again, was that they were naked.
So, what’s the big idea behind mentioning the fact that they were naked so many times? Here is what I think it is. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden, we are told that God would walk through the Garden with them. They spoke to Him face to face, and they enjoyed spending time with God. Then, when sin came into the earth through the actions of Adam and Eve, this time of being with the Lord ended. The relationship was broken. You see, when Adam and Eve were with God, they had no insecurities. They had no shame. They had no need for anything because God’s Presence was enough to make everything else seem unimportant. They were naked and unashamed because they were in contact with God and He gave them their sense of worth. Donald Miller sums it up this way.
Here is what I think Moses was saying: Man is wired so he gets his glory (his security, his understanding of value, his feeling of purpose, his feeling of rightness with his Maker, his security for eternity) from God, and this relationship is so strong, and God’s love so pure, that Adam and Eve felt no insecurity at all, so much so that they walked around naked and didn’t even realize they were naked. But when that relationship was broken, they knew it instantly. All of their glory, the glory that came from God, was gone.
I want you to think about it this way. How many of you have ever gone to the store with your parents as a child and got separated. When you were with your parents, you didn’t have a care in the world, but as soon as you knew you were alone in a strange place, all of your insecurities would rise to the top. You would start thinking the worst and would stop at nothing to be reunited with your family. That is how it is with God. We were created to be in constant fellowship with Him. That is what was intended from the beginning and that is how each of us has been wired. Now, we all have this void in our soul that is intended to be filled by God, but we try and fill it with any number of things. We fill it by gaining the approval of others, buying more things, and doing things to make us feel safe, but they will never do the trick. We must seek to fill this void with fellowship with God. After all, that is how God created us to be.
Truth #2: God already loves us more than we could ever know.
After we come to the realization that we need God and have been separated from Him because of our sin, we must find out if God will take us back. After all, Christ calls the church his bride, and if we call ourselves Christians, we are apart of the church. However, we have been unfaithful. When we turned our back on God by sinning, we basically cheated on our bridegroom to his face. We were basically telling Him that we were taking the world and the ways of the flesh as a lover. Can you imagine how much this had to devastate our loving bridegroom? But, instead of giving up on us, the love of God continued even though we were unfaithful. Can you imagine the depth of the love of God?
I want you to picture the following scene with me. Let’s say you go down to a local auction and find an aging woman standing on the auction block waiting to see who is going to buy her. You ask the gentleman next to you what is going on, and he fills you in on the story. You see, this woman used to be the town prostitute. She has made quite a bit of money for her master by selling her body, but it has come to the time where her beauty is fading and she is no longer useful. Now, he is trying to sell her to anyone who will take her, but there is not much response. This man also goes on to explain the fact that this woman used to be married and in love at one time. She had married a pastor and had three kids to him. However, she could not stay faithful, so she left them to go and sell her body again.
As you wait there, you can see that this woman is not going to bring a good price. After several minutes, there has only been one bid for only a couple of dollars. Then, from the back of the crowd, a man shouts out that he will buy this woman for thousands of dollars. He is declared the winner, so he comes to claim his prize. He places his hand on her back and calls her by first name. She looks up to se the loving husband she had run out on so many years ago. He has come to take her home and love her for the rest of time.
This is a love story that Hollywood could not make up. In fact, it is a true story from the book of Hosea. Hosea was a prophet from God and was told to take Gomer as his wife even though she was a prostitute. He loved her unconditionally, but she was unfaithful and ran away from home to sell her body again. Even after this, Hosea loved Gomer. He went after her and paid a great price to bring her back home to be his wife. He forgave her and loved her unconditionally. His story is a foreshadow of our relationship to God. We are the prostitute and God is the patient husband. We have gone our own way and sold ourselves to sin, but he has accepted us back. While we were out being unfaithful, God never stopped loving us. Instead, He paid the price of His only Son to give us a way to get back into fellowship with Him.
Think about that for a second. God did not have to create us, but he did. Then, He blessed us by giving us fellowship with Him. Then, we turned our backs on Him by disobeying the commands He has given us. We slapped Him in the face with our actions and walked out the door on our relationship with Him. Then, we continually do things that grieve His heart, but He loves us so much that He will take us back no matter what we do. And, in order to do that, He takes the one person who is perfect and deserves to be in fellowship with Him, and He kills Him. He allows Him to die a brutal death on a cross in order that we may be brought back into fellowship with Him. Do you realize how much love it would take to forgive us so much and to give up so much? It is almost too much to comprehend. He loves us more than we could ever know. Max Lucado puts it this way. “”If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning, and whenever you want to talk, He’ll listen.” That’s how much God thinks of you.
Truth #3: We must fall in love with God to experience true fellowship.
Now that we know that we were created to fellowship with God and that God loves us despite what we have done, what do we do next? How do we achieve that true fellowship? We must fall in love with God. We must love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. So, logically, our next question must be, how do you fall in love with God?
I want you all to think back in time to when you fell in love with someone. How did it happen? First of all, you had to meet the person. Then, you spent time getting to know the person. Finally, you came to the point where you knew there was a connection between you and this person, and you confessed those three words to them. You finally got up the courage to tell them, “I love you.” Now, if you think about it, we are created in God’s image, and Jesus has taken on human form. So, how do we fall in love with God? We treat Him like he is a person who is among us that we are interested in and follow the same type of pattern.
First of all, we must meet God. Most of us have already gone through this step, but it is worth repeating if there is only one here that has not gone through the process. We meet God by seeing His hands at work in nature or by performing miracles. We meet God by going to church and feeling that tug in our heart at the preacher speaks. We meet God by acknowledging that He is real and in our midst. Then, we take that step of faith and answer the knock at the door of our heart. We take the Lord seriously for the first time, ask Him to forgive us of our sins, and confess that He is God and Lord of our lives.
After we meet Him for the first time, then we need to get to know Him. We do this by reading the truth out of the Bible. We do not do this out of duty, but we do it because we truly are intrigued by a God that loves us so much, so we want to get to know Him. We don’t treat it like a chore, but we read it as a love story in which two long lost loves are going to be reunited. It is God’s Word, and it reveals who God is, how much He loves you, and what He wants to do for you. Then, after we read it in all its glory, we thank God for His goodness, praise Him for His wonderful traits, and we talk to Him to try and get to know Him better through prayer.
Finally, as time goes by and we approach the Bible as a book about relationships and about God seeking you even when you were His enemy, you will begin to love God more than you love any other human. You will feel the depth of His love, and you will begin to reciprocate that love for Him. You will come to the point where you cry out to God, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
In our society, we are longing for a love as true and as pure as the love of God. That is why we are flooded with mushy love songs, movies, books and the like having to do with love. We search and seek out that special person that will love us unconditionally, and we try to do all we can to let them know that we do love them. We write poetry. We buy flowers. We go out of our way to make life easier for the other person. I think it is about time we turn that love towards God and have that kind of passion for Him.
One of the greatest love poems of all time was written by Elizabeth Browning. It was used to describe her feelings for her husband, but I think it is appropriate to describe our relationship to God. I want to get to the point in my Christian relationship with the Lord that I can recite the words of this poem and mean it when I pray to the Lord.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old grief’s, and with my childhood’s faith
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
This morning, could you use these words to describe your relationship with Jesus Christ? Or, are you at the first step and need to let the Lord into your heart by asking Him to forgive you for your sins and telling Him He is Lord of your life. Maybe you just need to take that second step. You need to get to know the Lord better through reading His Word and through prayer. In order to do this, you need to start looking at His Word as a love story and not just a self help book. Or, you might need to take that last step this morning and declare your undying love for a God that loved you despite all the wrong you have done to Him. Where are you this morning? Are you as close to the Lord as you want to be? All you need to do is draw near to Him and He will draw near to you. Won’t you do that this morning? Our altars will be open as we listen to Carrie play and sing. Take this moment to get closer to a love affair with Jesus Christ. Let’s pray.
