THE FIVE GREATEST TEACHINGS OF THE WORD OF GOD
(Message 4 of 5)
“GOD WANTS RELATIONSHIP WITH US”
Video Link to Message:
https://youtu.be/79pX-4Gx_wA?si=2SCyQz5d_G8Nf7wi
Greenmount and O’Leary Churches of Christ
September 09, 2023
INTRODUCTION:
1) For a few weeks now we have been looking at what I consider to be the five most important teachings of the Word of God.
A) We have seen that:
aa.) “A Loving God has created this world.”
ab.) “Man Needs A Saviour.”
ac.) “Jesus is both the Almighty God, as well as Man Our Saviour.”
B) Today in the fourth message of this series I want us to see that “God wants a relationship with us.”
ba.) The question I ask is Why?
baa.) When God is the Creator, and we are the creation it seems strange that God would want a relationship with us.
.01) We are his inferiors.
.011) There is absolutely no answer from a logical point of view that Almighty God would want to be in a relationship with us, and yet He does.
.02) We are sinful and have treated God with wickedness, sin contempt, and everything else that is undesirable to a holy God.
.021) When we consider all these things why in the world would God want to have fellowship with us, much less to be in a relationship with us?
03) Crazy as it sounds, the God who created us loves us, and wants to be in a relationship with us.
.031) Even before God created us, he knew what we would be like if we were allowed to have our own free will, and yet He still desired to have a relationship with his creation.
2) I want to suggest a few reasons today as to why God would want to have a relationship with us.
I) GOD IS LOVE.
• 1 John 4:7-8, 10-11, 16-21
1) The very central characteristic of God is that He is love.
A) The fact that God is love in no way interferes with his holiness, justice, or any of these other qualities of God.
aa.) In fact, God uses these attributes in the directives of his love.
2) God’s purpose in the creation of man was to have a being with whom He could share his love.
A) Our first reaction to that could be “That is awful needy of God.
aa.) In fact, to hear that we could easily put God down on our level with our own need for love and for acceptance.
aaa.) To do so would be to misunderstand both God, and the very principle of God’s love.
B) Truth is not that God is needy, or in need of our love or anything else that we have to give to him.
ba.) Love is not something that God needs from any of us.
bb.) While God has created us to be the recipients of His Love which is the very character of God, Love does not boost the ego of God.
bc.) Our love does not in any way make God more God than He already is, nor will the absence of our love give him an inferiority complex.
bd.) In fact our giving and receiving of the Love of God is more for our benefit, than for the benefit of God.
bda.) Don’t get me wrong; God wants our love, and enjoys it when we love and serve Him, but God in no ways needs our love.
3) God has created man in his image as the supreme part of creation.
A) In fact, when God made man, we were the last piece of his creation to be created.
B) The entirety of all creation was designed and made to provide the very best for the part of creation that had been made in His image.
ba.) Even before anything else had ever been created, God already had in his mind the humanity as the supreme part of his creation.
bb.) Before there was a human on earth, and even before the world had been created, God had decided to create man in his own image.
bba.) there was a world, God even then had love in his heart for mankind.
bc.) All creation had been designed for the human race.
bca.) When the animals and birds, and all else had been created, God brought them all to Adam so that Adam could name them.
.01) Genesis 2:19-20
.02) Certainly God could have named the animal world himself.
.03) Yet God gave to man the privilege of naming the birds and the animals as an act of His love, and to show that like God, man was to have dominion over all creation.
.031) Genesis 1:28
C) We are the only part of this world who consciously decides to worship and to love God, or to reject Him.
ba.) We are the only part of creation that share with God in our mental ability.
bb.) We are the only part of creation that has been given a soul and a spiritual nature.
bc.) We are also the only part of creation with the ability to fully love, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, in all ways.
bca.) At this point, you might tell me how smart you cat, or dog is, and how affectionate they are, and of how much they love you.
bcb.) I will agree there is a certain amount of truth in that, but not one of these animals has the capacity of love that God has given to human beings.
.01) The reason being, is that none of them have been made in the image of God,
.02) We have been made in the image of God as an act of love from our Creator.
.03) I believe we have also been made in the image of God so that we could have a relationship with the God who created us.
II) GOD WANTED THE HIGHEST OF HIS CREATION TO SHARE THE GREAT ATTRIBUTE OF THE PERSON OF GOD WHICH IS LOVE.
1) The highest form and level of love any of us can have is to love God supremely.
A) There was an occasion when many religious leaders were trying to trap Jesus in his words.
aa.) I suppose in many ways this could have been nearly any day of Jesus’ ministry, as it seemed that often they would spend their time trying to trap Jesus in his words and teaching.
B) But on this day, the Pharisees and Herodians came to challenge him.
C) After that the Sadducees challenged him.
D) After that a Scribe came up to test him.
da.) By this time Jesus must have been getting exhausted at all these questions whose intent was not an honest answer, but out of a motive of entrapment.
db.) Anyway this scribe came with a question as to which was the greatest commandment of Scripture.
dca.) This would not have been an easy question to answer.
.01) In the Old Testament someone has calculated there are 613 separate commandments.
.02) It would have been a challenge to remember all these commandments much less to discern which of these were the greatest.
dd.) Yet as difficult as this would have been, Jesus was able to reduce every commandment of Scripture, as well as much of the content of the Word of God into two commandments.
dda.) Mark 12:28-31
.01) “Love God with all your heart, and soul, and mind and strength”
.02) “Love Your Neighbour as yourself.”
ddb.) See God is about relationship, and every page, chapter, and verse of the Word of God deals with having a relationship with God and having a relationship with our fellow man.
ddc.) When the entire Bible is saturated with the love of God, we have no choice but to see love, both God’s love for us, and our love for him and for others as one of the greatest teachings of all the Word of God.
III) GOD HAS ALWAYS SHOWN HIS LOVE TO THE HIGHEST OF HIS CREATION.
1) Some might try to counter the love of God with the judgment of God.
A) They could say look at Adam and Eve being cast out of Eden.
B) They would remind us of the great flood.
C) They would remind us of God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah for their sexual sinfulness and perversion.
D) They would remind us of the coming fires of hell.
da.) The Skeptic could look at any of these to argue that God is not really a God of love.
E) I do not deny any of these teachings of Scripture just as I also do not deny that in this room are good parents who love your children, and yet have at times had to discipline and even punish your children.
ea.) There is probably not a parent in this room who at one time or another has not had your child or children tell you they hate you, and that you are the worst parent that ever was, and all kinds of other lovely things from their mouths to intentionally hurt us.
eaa.) Yet that has not stopped us from loving our children or from having a relationship with them.
eab.) God loves us with an unfailing love but in his holiness will not let our sin and wickedness go undealt with.
2) In fact, the most powerful expression of the love of God is through offering us his own Son Jesus the Christ for our salvation.
A) This was the supreme act of God to show this world that God loves us and wants a relationship with us.
B) Let us look at several passages of Scripture which show this very thing:
ba.) John 3:16-17
bb.) Romans 8:38-39
bc.) Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
bd.) Ephesians 3:16-19
that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
be.) 2 Thessalonians 3:5
May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.
bf.) 1 John 3:1
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so, we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
C) We could have looked at many more verse of Scripture that tell us that God loves us and wants a relationship with us.
CONCLUSION:
1) Because God is love and wants to share this aspect of himself, I have to say that God’s desire to love us and to be in a relationship with us is one of the greatest teachings of all the Word of God.
2) God wants to have a relationship with you.
A) Because of Jesus and what he accomplished on the cross we can come through faith in Him pledging our allegiance to him as we are buried in the waters of baptism.
3) Next week in the final of our messages we will see that “God rules and reigns forever (even when it doesn’t look like it.”
