This week's Sermon @ First B Jackson -March 2nd

March 2, 2025

Scripture referenced 11 passages

The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.

Genesis 1:27 God created man in his image, male and female

27 God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.

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Genesis 3:8-9

Adam and Eve hiding from God, God calling out where are you

8 They heard Yahweh God’s voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.

9 Yahweh God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

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Psalm 34:8

taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the one who takes refuge in him

8 Oh taste and see that Yahweh is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

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Romans 5:8

while we were still sinners, Christ died for us

8 But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

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Ephesians 2:8-10

salvation was of no merit of our own

8 for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,

9 not of works, that no one would boast.

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.

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John 3

Jesus telling Nicodemus he must be born again

1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.

2 The same came to him by night, and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.”

3 Jesus answered him, “Most certainly, I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can’t see God’s Kingdom.”

4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?”

5 Jesus answered, “Most certainly I tell you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he can’t enter into God’s Kingdom.

6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

7 Don’t marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’

8 The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but don’t know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

9 Nicodemus answered him, “How can these things be?”

10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and don’t understand these things?

11 Most certainly I tell you, we speak that which we know, and testify of that which we have seen, and you don’t receive our witness.

12 If I told you earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

13 No one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.

14 As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,

15 that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

17 For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.

18 He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.

19 This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.

20 For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, lest his works would be exposed.

21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God.”

22 After these things, Jesus came with his disciples into the land of Judea. He stayed there with them, and baptized.

23 John also was baptizing in Enon near Salim, because there was much water there. They came, and were baptized.

24 For John was not yet thrown into prison.

25 There arose therefore a questioning on the part of John’s disciples with some Jews about purification.

26 They came to John, and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified, behold, the same baptizes, and everyone is coming to him.”

27 John answered, “A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given him from heaven.

28 You yourselves testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent before him.’

29 He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. This, my joy, therefore is made full.

30 He must increase, but I must decrease.

31 He who comes from above is above all. He who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.

32 What he has seen and heard, of that he testifies; and no one receives his witness.

33 He who has received his witness has set his seal to this, that God is true.

34 For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for God gives the Spirit without measure.

35 The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand.

36 One who believes in the Son has eternal life, but one who disobeys the Son won’t see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

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John 14:15

if you love me you will keep my commands

15 If you love me, keep my commandments.

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1 Corinthians 13

Paul on love not being done through gritted teeth or fear

1 If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.

2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing.

3 If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.

4 Love is patient and is kind; love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud,

5 doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil;

6 doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with.

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part;

10 but when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with.

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.

12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known.

13 But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three. The greatest of these is love.

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1 John 4

God pouring out his love as deep and permanent commitment

1 Beloved, don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,

3 and every spirit who doesn’t confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God, and this is the spirit of the Antichrist, of whom you have heard that it comes. Now it is in the world already.

4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.

5 They are of the world. Therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them.

6 We are of God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not of God doesn’t listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God.

8 He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love.

9 By this God’s love was revealed in us, that God has sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

11 Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another.

12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love has been perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we remain in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as the Savior of the world.

15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God.

16 We know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.

17 In this love has been made perfect among us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, even so are we in this world.

18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment. He who fears is not made perfect in love.

19 We love him, because he first loved us.

20 If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?

21 This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should also love his brother.

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John 15

abiding in the vine, apart from me you can do nothing

1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer.

2 Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

3 You are already pruned clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.

4 Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me.

5 I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

6 If a man doesn’t remain in me, he is thrown out as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned.

7 If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you.

8 “In this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit; and so you will be my disciples.

9 Even as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Remain in my love.

10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and remain in his love.

11 I have spoken these things to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be made full.

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.

13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

14 You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you.

15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you.

16 You didn’t choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

17 “I command these things to you, that you may love one another.

18 If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you.

19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his lord.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

21 But all these things will they do to you for my name’s sake, because they don’t know him who sent me.

22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.

23 He who hates me, hates my Father also.

24 If I hadn’t done among them the works which no one else did, they wouldn’t have had sin. But now have they seen and also hated both me and my Father.

25 But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’

26 “When the Counselor has come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me.

27 You will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.

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Revelation 21

tabernacle of God among the people, he will wipe away every tear

1 I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth have passed away, and the sea is no more.

2 I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

3 I heard a loud voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with people, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more. The first things have passed away.”

5 He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” He said, “Write, for these words of God are faithful and true.”

6 He said to me, “I have become the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give freely to him who is thirsty from the spring of the water of life.

7 He who overcomes, I will give him these things. I will be his God, and he will be my son.

8 But for the cowardly, unbelieving, sinners, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their part is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

9 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls, who were loaded with the seven last plagues came, and he spoke with me, saying, “Come here. I will show you the wife, the Lamb’s bride.”

10 He carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,

11 having the glory of God. Her light was like a most precious stone, as if it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal;

12 having a great and high wall; having twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.

13 On the east were three gates; and on the north three gates; and on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.

14 The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.

15 He who spoke with me had for a measure a golden reed to measure the city, its gates, and its walls.

16 The city is square, and its length is as great as its width. He measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand twelve stadia. Its length, width, and height are equal.

17 Its wall is one hundred forty-four cubits, by the measure of a man, that is, of an angel.

18 The construction of its wall was jasper. The city was pure gold, like pure glass.

19 The foundations of the city’s wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald;

20 the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprasus; the eleventh, jacinth; and the twelfth, amethyst.

21 The twelve gates were twelve pearls. Each one of the gates was made of one pearl. The street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

22 I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, are its temple.

23 The city has no need for the sun, neither of the moon, to shine, for the very glory of God illuminated it, and its lamp is the Lamb.

24 The nations will walk in its light. The kings of the earth bring the glory and honor of the nations into it.

25 Its gates will in no way be shut by day (for there will be no night there),

26 and they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it so that they may enter.

27 There will in no way enter into it anything profane, or one who causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

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Recap

The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.

This message was the first of a two-part series on relationship, focusing on how we were made for relationship with God. Pastor Brad walked through three things that need diagnosing and repairing: our image of God, our understanding of love, and our identity. The driving concern throughout was the gap between knowing facts about God and actually knowing him.

What was said

The starting point was the imago dei. God is the creator, so he gets to say what we are made for, and what we are made for is relationship with him and with each other. Because God himself has always been relational in his triune nature, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit existing in perfect love, we who are made in that image are not complete when we ignore relationship. That is the design. Ignoring it does damage the same way using a hammer to make a phone call does damage.

The problem is that our experiences leave something like scar tissue in how we process information, including information about God. A person can memorize Romans, read theology, and pass a seminary exam while still carrying around a working image of God that looks nothing like what they would write on the test. That gap, between the God we know academically and the God we actually picture when we pray, is where lies take hold. The daily Bible project and scripture memory are good tools, but Pastor Brad was clear that reading scripture is less like a research project and more like getting to know a person. The heart cannot love what the mind does not know, but accumulating information is not the same thing as knowing someone.

From there came a working definition of love for the series: a sacrificial, active outpouring of an inward desire to want the highest good for someone. This matters because the culture uses the word love to cover everything from tacos to marriage, and Jesus is not talking about any of that when he gives the great commandment. Love in the biblical sense is not a feeling you wait to have, and it cannot be sustained through gritted teeth and willpower. It is agape, the kind God demonstrated at the cross while we were still enemies, not assets.

Pastor Brad pressed on something personal here, the difference between feeling useful for God and feeling beloved by him. He said it is easier for him, more natural, to feel useful than beloved. But the cross does not commend our usefulness. Romans 5:8 makes the sequence clear: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Any view of God that limits his love or his capacity to forgive is simply a wrong view of God, and the thief on the cross is the straightforward proof: no church attendance, no baptism, no giving, just the entire remainder of his life handed over to Jesus.

The third point was identity. In the West, Pastor Brad said, we attach identity to things that can be taken away, a job, a sport, a family role, a political tribe. When those things are threatened, we react in ways we do not understand because the real wound is deeper than the surface criticism. The repair is rooting primary identity in being a child of God, and that is something entirely received, not earned. He used the picture of adoption and of the prodigal son's father to make the point: God is rushing out to meet us, and we keep offering to be servants instead.

The sermon closed with a practical pause. People were asked to write down what is stopping them from drawing nearer to God, to pray briefly over whatever came to mind, and then to reach out to another believer that week and name it out loud. The picture Pastor Brad wanted to leave was not Christ as a legal advocate pleading for one more extension on Brad's behalf, but God looking at someone in whom he sees the righteousness of Jesus, not the record of sin, because that is what it actually means to be in Christ.

Doing a Bible study?

Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages in order, questions for the group, and room to write.

Pastor Brad talked about carrying two different images of God at the same time, one from theology and one shaped by our experiences. Have you noticed a gap between those two in your own life, and where do you think that gap came from?
Pastor Brad said it is more natural for him to feel useful for God than to feel beloved by him. Do you relate to that, and what does it look like in your day-to-day life?

and 3 more questions in the guide

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Find in this transcript

0:00 Created man in his own image in the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. In Genesis three eight through nine, now 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. Then the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, where are you? Well, using something in the way that it was not meant to has negative consequences.

0:31 And who gets to say what something is made for? Generally, the creator. Swap, for example, an iPhone and a hammer. One of these is good for getting your attention and for communication, and the other is good for driving nails. If I use this to drive nails, or this to get your attention, it's not going to go very well, and I might end up in prison.

0:58 Similarly, each of us have a creator. He gets to say what we are made for. We are made in his image and for a specific purpose, and God made us for relationship with him and with each other. But believing a lie about God, each and every one of us have rejected God and now live in a fallen world and relationships are hard. But God's rescue plan cannot be thwarted, not by us and not by the enemy.

1:28 So we're gonna spend two weeks looking at how we were made for relationship. Today we're gonna talk about how we were made for relationship with God, and next week how we were made for relationship with people. And this is straight from the core text, from the great commandment. One more time. Anyway, you saw it already.

1:50 Thanks Blake. Because we're looking at how to do this. How to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. How to love your neighbor as yourself. Now before I go any further, I need to lay down a basic definition of love.

2:06 Because in our culture and in English in particular, we use love to mean everything. I love tacos. I love mountain biking. I love my wife, my children and Jesus. And we need to differentiate that.

2:21 So for our purposes today, we're gonna say that love in light of the gospel is a sacrificial active outpouring of an inward desire to want the highest good for someone. Now I'll put that on the screen and we'll unpack it later, but I just wanna, you know, as Mike D says, put the cookies on the bottom shelf. So that's our definition for love today. But to make this personal, I've always had this underlying feeling that I needed to achieve in order to be loved. That my worth was directly tied to my utility.

2:55 Not necessarily that I had to earn love on like a daily basis, but that I had to earn in general the right to be loved, if that makes sense. But the problem with earning love is it also means that you can unearn love. Because if I am loved for what I do, what happens when what I do changes? And the more I've talked with other people about it, the more I've noticed that others have similar compulsions. Because to be honest with you, I still have that feeling sometimes.

3:23 But now I have the counter narrative that I am loved not because of what I do. If anything, it's in spite of what I do, but because of who God is and who I am to him, that makes me worth loving. So I'm not some aggregation of good works, but instead as the worship song says, I'm no longer a slave to fear, I am a child of God. And this is a lot of what we're gathered here today and every Sunday to do. To encourage one another, to worship the Lord God, and to remind each other of the truth about God and about ourselves.

4:07 Because in reformed and biblical circles, we tend to talk a lot about the justice of God, the righteousness of God, the holiness of God, and those are very important. But if you look at the scripture, if you look at the early church, and if you look at Jesus, the most primary attribute of God is that he is love. God has been triune, father, son, and Holy Spirit since before creation. God is inherently relational. He created us in his image and out of that love to be like him.

4:43 So we do pursue holiness. We pursue justice. We pursue righteousness. But to truly be like God, we must love and experience love. We love God and we love people just like our church mission statement says.

5:00 And God is the one that gets to define what love is because God is love. And at great cost to him, he rescued us from our sin. Not because of our works, but because of our special relationship to him as his children. We are then made to be a kingdom of priests who can gather together as ministers every Sunday to encourage one another and then go out into the world and live our lives as a holy sacrifice pleasing to God. So that's our intro for for our three point outline as usual.

5:35 We're gonna look at repairing three things in us. We're gonna look at our image of God and what it means to be made in his image. We're gonna look at our lived concept of love, and we're gonna look at our identity. But with each of these things, in order to repair it, you first have to diagnose what is broken. I recently had a truck breakdown, and, you know, first thing you do is you look at the dash, you see the check engine light, you look at the gauges, you make sure you're not just like out of fuel and out of oil.

6:01 And then you plug in the diagnostic code reader thing underneath the dashboard, and it tells you what's generally going on. And if it's something easy, then you can take care of it yourself. But if you're useless around vehicles like I am, then the moment it's something serious, in my case, it was a fuel injector, you gotta call in an expert. Somebody has to rip out the turbo, rip out the intake manifold just to get access to the broken part in the engine. And I needed help, both literally and figuratively in this case, to look at what was broken in the engine of the truck.

6:34 And that's what we're doing today. So our first point then is we're gonna look at the imago dei. What it means to be made in the image of God and repairing our image of him. Because knowing myself to be deeply loved by God is the first step towards loving God and loving others. God knew you.

6:53 He knew everything about you, and he made you for a purpose. To know him and to love him and to enjoy him forever as the great catechism says. He knew what you would look like. He knew your talents. He knew your sins.

7:09 He knew all of it. And he looks at you and he says, yes. That one. That is my child and I delight in them. And he says that to each and every one of you if you are in Christ.

7:22 But do we know that? And do we operate out of that? Do we know it on a gut level? Or are we just affirming academic truths about God the same way that we might about Facebook friend or about our favorite athlete? Because there is a massive difference between knowing God and knowing about him.

7:41 It's been really well said that a lot of people are gonna miss heaven by 14 inches, which is the distance between your head and your heart. It is a big difference to know God versus knowing about him. Or let me make this crystal clear, and this is harsh, but it's true. There are a lot of people with advanced degrees in seminaries, even teaching courses in seminaries that know the Hebrew, the Greek, the Aramaic, know the church history, but they don't know their savior. And that difference has an eternal consequence.

8:14 It's the difference between heaven and hell. Or you compare that then with children downstairs in our Sunday school that know one thing and one thing only. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. And that's it. But they know they were made for relationship with God.

8:38 Or put another way, I think it's pretty obvious that Frito's scoops are the greatest snack ever made. I can tell you about the simple ingredients, the balance of saltiness and sweetness and crunch. I actually even have a friend back in Dallas who is an extrusion engineer and can send you videos of how they make Fritos, and I would not recommend you watch it if you like eating them. You can accumulate all this intellectual knowledge about a Frito. But if you don't actually eat one and taste it, you have no idea what a Frito actually is.

9:13 And God is the same way. We sang a song in the first service, Psalm thirty four eight, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. We cannot just know about God, we have to know him intimately. We have to take refuge in him and him alone.

9:31 Only then can we know the most important thing about ourselves which was that we were made in his image. And I'll say it again because it's outlandish that you were made in the image of God. Not the animals, not the angels, us made in God's image and everyone around us. And who is God? God is love.

9:55 And we need to talk about the trinity for a second. And I know that this gets people hung up, but it's important for our concept for today. Because the the the Trinity is the core uncompromisable Christian doctrine that God has been one being in three persons eternally. That means the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been eternally existent as God. Each of them are God and together they are God.

10:20 The three persons of the trinity exist in perfect love and to glorify one another. And what's crazy is we were made in that image. We as humans though are not complete in and of ourselves, but God is and has always been inherently relational in nature. But God was complete without us. He does not depend upon us, but in his perfect love, he wanted to share the glory of him and his creation with us in love because that further glorifies him.

10:54 And what that means for us practically is that if we don't prioritize our relationships with God and with people, we are actually falling short on the very thing that our creator made us for, like a hammer or an iPhone. So the basic premise here from a philosophical standpoint is that God is relational. We are made in his image, therefore, we are inherently relational. And the neurobiology behind this stuff is fascinating. I love it when science catches up to things that the Bible has been saying for thousands of years as if it's a revelation.

11:30 But my friend my friends at the Eden Project whose work is a lot of the basis for this message, they've done some really good writing on this stuff. But the gist of it is that we are not actual just actually just walking computers. We are inherently relational and experiential beings. We are made in the image of God. And to ignore that is to ignore our design and likely do great damage to ourselves and to those around us, like swapping an iPhone for a hammer.

11:57 So but what happens is when bad experiences interrupt our ability to process rationally, we get the mental equivalent of scar tissue. So if you're angry, or you're hurt, or you're sad, it can actually interrupt your body's ability to process information rationally, and that creates scar tissue effectively in the brain. And so what happens is if we were hurt by the church, by a loved one, by a parent, we don't process the information in the Bible straightforward, linear, rational. So we can memorize Romans, we can read lots of Christian books, but when it comes to how we think about God, we carry a wrong image of God in our minds, especially when it comes to thinking about God as father. And we might not even be aware of it.

12:47 And that image of God that we carry might be very different from what we would say on a theology test for example. So we carry around these two different versions of God within us, and the gap between those is an opportunity for us to fall prey to the to the lies of the enemy. And we have to be aware of it. That image of God that we carry around that's informed by our experiences, that's the God that we tend to think about as we go through our daily lives or as we go to pray to him. And we just need to be aware that it's different because of our experiential and relational nature.

13:21 And I'm not saying that we shouldn't study our Bibles. We should. That's why we started the daily Bible project. So that you can have God's word in your inbox every morning and it'd be easy to understand and easy to keep up with the habit. You should read as much scripture as you can.

13:37 You should memorize as much scripture as you can. If you wanna redeem that walking temptation in your phone or the the walking temptation that is your phone, use it to memorize scriptures. It's called the scripture memory app. It's very creatively named, but it's great for memorizing scripture. Use it.

13:56 It's awesome. But again, what I'm saying is that reading your Bible and memorizing scripture is less like a research project or an academic exam and it is more like getting to know someone. We read the Bible because the heart cannot love what the mind does not know. The heart cannot love what the mind does not know. So our quiet times then are not to achieve anything.

14:24 They are to receive the grace of God and remind ourselves of the truth that you are loved, that you've rejected God, and that he loves you and has rescued you still. We are most fully living into our calling then when we love God and love others just as Jesus says in the great commandment. But how do we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind as Jesus is calling us to today? We have to know God and know ourselves and rightly. And we also have to know what Jesus meant by love.

14:56 We have to repair our concept of love. What is love? Nice. Good luck getting that out of your head for the rest of the day. Part of being made in the image of God is that we have a special relationship with him unlike any animal, unlike any angel.

15:22 Look at how intimate the relationship between God and humans is in Genesis two and three. God was in communion with man. He delighted in us and spent time with us. He walked with Adam in the cool of the day. Here's one of my favorite bits.

15:39 Imagine the excitement. Imagine you're there as like a third party observer and you got to see the delight that God has in bringing the animals of the field to Adam to see what he would name them. To me that feels like a father seeing his toddler develop and like learn new skills or build something or call something a new name. But here's the question for you to consider for a moment. Do you believe that God rejoices in you in the same way that he did here?

16:12 That he enjoys spending time with you like a father with a toddler. Because that can sometimes be hard for me and it's much easier for me to feel useful for God than it is to feel beloved by him. It is much easier for me. It is more natural for me to feel useful for God than it is to feel beloved by him. And that's what I'm pressing against today.

16:38 But the truth is that God does delight in us. And it's not because of anything we do. Paul really efficiently destroys this idea in Romans five eight when he says, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Ephesians two eight through 10 makes it clear, it was of no merit of our own. Church, you were not only unuseful when God rescued you, you were an enemy of his.

17:10 And it's harsh, but it's so helpful for resetting. Because it takes deep work and reflection on a core level to remind myself of the truth that God loves me. And the simplest way for me to learn that is by looking at the cross. And when you know that God rejoices in you, it changes everything because that's how we can have joy in the trials. And remember, we are promised trials.

17:37 And it's also how you can work for God and not get too puffed up in success or too deflated in failure because we're trusting God's love and trusting him with the outcomes. Because God wants so much more for you than just compliance or work. He wants your heart. All of it. Christianity is not something that we add to our lives.

17:59 It is our lives. And following Christ then means recognizing God's sacrificial love for us and responding in love for him. Not just trying to be a better version of ourselves, but as Jesus told Nicodemus in John three, being born again. Now that said, scripture also makes clear that if we love him, we will keep his commands. It's exactly what Jesus said in John fourteen fifteen.

18:28 If you love me, you will keep my commands. But his commands are not burdensome. And we're not doing it to earn anything. And this is the exact dichotomy of superficial compliance versus love that Jesus spent his earthly ministry preaching to Israel about. You can basically distill Jesus' ministry to the Jews down to two messages.

18:52 One, that God is love and that we should love as he loves. And two, that Jesus is God and is living proof of God's love for Israel and for us. When Jesus said that he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law, this is what he was talking about and why in our core text for today, he was able to distill the entire law down into just two commands. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. Church, these aren't tips and tricks.

19:26 This isn't self help for living the good life. These are the manufacturer's instructions. This is the guidebook. This is the user manual for being human. And if you love God, you will submit to him joyfully and seek to obey his commands.

19:44 Jesus said effectively, you can do all the right things, but if you do not have love, you are not a child of God, you are a child of the devil. And this was the message that he preached against the pharisees, and it made him so mad that they killed him. And maybe you're feeling some of that discomfort right now. Because you think about what you're being called to. Giving your whole life for your whole life over to God, that's a lot of trust.

20:18 All of your time, all of your effort, all of your money forever. Opening our clenched fist for an open hand for God. And that's hard. But if you're feeling that discomfort right now, that's good news in a lot of ways because that means God isn't done working on you yet. That the Holy Spirit is convicting you.

20:41 Just be aware of that discomfort or that tension when you read a biblical command of any kind. Because the Holy Spirit is working in you so that you can love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And you can love your neighbor as yourself. But how can Jesus command us to love? Isn't love a feeling?

21:01 That's what our culture says. Our definition instead for today, a biblical definition of love is that love in light of the gospel is a sacrificial active outpouring of an inward desire to want the highest good for someone. Basically, it's a pure feeling, acted out sacrificially. That is love. Or another definition is love is desiring the best for the object loved.

21:32 But love can't be done in isolation. You cannot love alone. It cannot be done through the power of the will and it cannot be done through gritted teeth and fear. Because love defeats anxiety, defeats fear, defeats shame, and guilt, and even ultimately sin. Paul talks about this so much in first Corinthians 13.

21:50 But this isn't some cheap imitation of love born out of sexual desire or even that classic understood implication that you're gonna get back roughly what you give. This love is not fair. It's not supposed to be. This is the highest form of love, the self sacrificial kind. You've likely heard something about this in church circles before.

22:11 It's the agape love. And like first John four says, when God poured out his love for you, it was not a temporary emotion or an expression of some shallow form. It was the deepest form of true love. It was a deep and permanent commitment and the culmination of a rescue plan that had been in place since before time. That you would know the personal and permanent love of God.

22:35 So no matter what you have done, your sin is not more powerful than the cross. You may have heard of people, and this may be you, that thinks there is something in your past that God will not forgive, that God cannot redeem. And you need to know that is that is not true. Because while it sounds humble, what it really is is a wrong view of God. Because any view of God that limits his love or his power or his capacity forgiveness is a wrong view of God.

23:06 A right view of God acknowledges that there is nothing more powerful than the cross. It overcomes everything. Jesus looked at his very executioners, the guys that nailed into his hands and nailed into his feet, and he offered each and every one of them forgiveness. Even the thief to his side who was previously mocking Jesus. Jesus offered him love and forgiveness and that thief accepted it.

23:42 When that thief went from mocking Jesus to acknowledging him as Lord and Savior, Jesus didn't say to him, look, your time's short, deathbed confessions don't mean anything, you haven't done enough. No. He said, truly you will be with me this day in paradise. I love the thief on the cross. It straightens out my theology.

24:03 Because you know what the thief on the cross didn't do? He never went to church, he was never baptized, he didn't give. But you know what the thief on the cross did do? He gave his entire life for the entire span that he had left in his life to Jesus. And that's what we're called to do.

24:27 It's such a good reminder for me that it's not about good works. It's about a true heart level faith and belief in Jesus. Another way to think about this is that sin can be defined relationally as the unwillingness to trust what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness. Any thoughts or actions that stem from this distrust are symptom, not cause. So you have to deal with the root cause first.

24:59 We have to deal with this temptation in our hearts. Because when you don't believe that God has your best interest at heart, you may give 80% to him, but you're gonna hold 20% back. And then you're gonna kinda tend to think that God somehow owes you for the 80%. And then when things don't go well in your life, you end up bitter and angry at God, if it doesn't go according to your plan. But that isn't how God works.

25:24 Remember God wants all of your heart forever. He wants you and he wants me to be dependent not on our own strength, but on his. And that's been a really hard lesson for me to learn these last few years. Instead, I can remind myself and you can remind yourself that if you turn to God and say yes to him, to his yes to you, your whole slate is wiped clean. God looks on you and no longer sees a servant, no longer sees a slave, no longer sees a sinner, he sees his son, Jesus.

26:01 So it doesn't matter if it's murder or adultery or abortion or satanism or gossip or slander or covetousness, lying, stealing, the strength of your own independence, all of it pales in comparison to the power of the cross. Your sin is forgiven fully, freely, and forever. And it was at great cost to God, but he was so glad to pay that cost because the prize was you. And that works to his glory. And yet, I have such a hard time believing and living out of that.

26:37 Take your quiet time for example. Quiet time's a great discipline. And I can't really function without it. But my quiet time can drift, and I can either make it academic, or I can sometimes make it performative, as if I'm doing it for somebody other than myself. And neither of those is the right way to have a quiet time, because neither of those are relational.

27:00 No, my quiet time is to know myself and to know God. Having a relationship with the Almighty God is different from having a relationship from with people And that's hard for us to admit in a lot of ways, but we can admit it. Because if we go out for coffee and I ask you to do something or if I ask you a direct question, I can generally expect a timely direct and audible answer from you. But God doesn't really work that way all the time. But he has given us plenty of ways that he communicates with us.

27:30 Through his word, through convictions of the Holy Spirit, through life circumstances, through other believers, even through the grandeur of his creation. If we would but seek a relationship with him. But the only way that we can interface with those bits of communication properly is what Jesus called in John 15, abiding. He said, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me, you can do nothing.

28:02 Abide. It basically means to actively choose to remain in. It's like active passivity. It's being still. It's being in relationship.

28:15 Or help maybe this clarifies because the opposite example of abiding is probably hurry. Think about when you're in a human conversation, and you kinda feel like the other person's hurrying through it. You kinda feel like a to do item on their checklist to be crossed off. You don't feel loved in that. Now think about how that is with your quiet time.

28:38 If it's distracted, if it's hurried, if it's perfunctory or educational, that's not relational. There are lots of ways to have a quiet time that are not abiding. And this is where our our western model for Christian maturity runs smack into the immovable object of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because our model for these days for Christian maturity looks a lot like accumulating knowledge makes you more mature. So that ever since Descartes really, we've assumed that more knowledge makes you more mature.

29:17 And that's not necessarily wrong, it's just incomplete because it ignores the fact that we were made in the image of a relational God. So we can cultivate our love for God instead the same way that a vintner cultivates a vine, By remaining attached to the true, the life giving vine and abiding. I have to learn to ignore the lies and the hurry of the world and to overcome them and to root myself in Christ. There's a reason why Jesus used a lot of agricultural analogies. Yes, it was the language of the day, but also you can plant a seed, you can water, you can plow, but who does the growing?

29:59 God does the growing. So that basically means making sure that my primary identity is in Christ as a child of God. And this is our third point, and Blake doesn't have a song for this one. But most of us don't realize it, but here in the West, we have wildly unanchored identities. So what happens is we tend to attach ourselves to achievement or to these kind of arbitrary concepts of a team.

30:25 And that can be politics, that can be race, that can be sports, that can be educational level, or your family, or your profession, any of these things. But if you think about the volatile nature of those, every single one of those can be taken away in this world. If my primary identity is being Natalie's husband, or Jack and Abby's father, it's painful to think about, but that can go away, and I can be devastated. Or if my identity is based on being good at my job and I have a bad month, quarter, or year, It can crush my identity. Or for example, if my primary identity is in being a good father, that can drive me to do a lot of good things.

31:12 But let's say Natalie notices something in my life where where I'm I'm coming up short, or she would like to just help me and point out something where I can do better. If my primary identity is in being a good father, I'm not gonna hear that as a helpful criticism. I'm gonna feel attacked in that moment. And so I might lash out and have no idea why I'm doing it. And this is why we have to root ourselves in our identity as children of God first and foremost.

31:41 And we do it every day in our quiet time. Because it's impossible without reflection and without help from other believers to recognize these shortcomings in our own lives or where we're maybe placing our identity. And that truth with regards to our identities, like I've said, we are children of God. And think about what's required of you to become a child. Nothing.

32:05 I've been in the delivery room a couple of times, and I was not much help. But you know who was even less help than me? Was the baby. They did nothing. Similarly with adoption.

32:21 I've had some friends go through the beautiful process of adoption. And you know what the child does? Nothing. They are merely a passive recipient of an active and new love by these parents and the legal status that is entirely bestowed upon them. And yet, God is calling us his children and like the prodigal son, we keep wanting to make ourselves slaves.

32:51 God is rushing out to meet us through Christ and through the Holy Spirit. He wants to put a ring on our finger, he wants to kill the fatted calf, he wants to throw us a party and we go, no, I'll just be a servant. Or we fall prey to the temptation like Adam and Eve did in the garden that we don't love God, just love his stuff. We don't trust the love and the provision of our perfect father. And you can think about this in your prayer life, because how much of your time in prayer life is spent actively praising and thanking God for who he is and the blessings that are in your life?

33:24 When I'm in a hurry, my prayer life can often look like a laundry list of things that I wanna see God do. And I tend to think of them as good godly things. I wanna see him do this in the church and this in the community. And instead, a better quiet time and this is something I've been working on that has brought a depth to my quiet times that I previously didn't have, is that I can spend time praying with God. Because the greatest gift that God can give us is more of him.

33:57 Not more stuff, not more comfort, not less suffering, not even more time on this earth. More of him is the greatest gift he can give us. Think about that the next time you go to pray. So how do we do this? How do we transform the nature of our relationship with God from servant to son?

34:15 How do we repair our broken relationship with God? First, we need to recognize that God has already done it through Jesus Christ. He's already done the work. We just have to start living in that truth. We have to acknowledge it and we have to cram it into the guts of our soul through contemplation, through meditation, through prayer, through the study of scripture, through talking about it with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

34:43 Two things tend to stand between us and effective life change, in any aspect of life. Fear and lethargy. So I'm gonna ask you to do something now that we don't do a lot in church. I'm gonna ask everybody to pull out their phone and either open your like notes app, your reminder app, your calendar, or I left some notebook paper floating around in the seats. Because I'm gonna ask you a question and I want you to write down your answer to it.

35:11 There's no right or wrong answer. This is only for you to read. What is stopping you from drawing nearer to God? This can be a feeling. This can be a thing.

35:27 This can be a lack of clarity. What is stopping you from drawing nearer to God? Be honest with yourself. What's stopping you from taking the next step in faith towards him? I want you to write down what comes to mind.

35:40 What are some feelings or barriers to your relationship with God? Is it busyness? Is it fear of what he might ask you to do or might ask you to give up? Is it uncertainty about the next steps? Be honest.

35:57 And now I wanna give you a moment to pray about it. Give me a moment to give that over to God. God, recognize there are things that are in the way between us having a more intimate relationship with you. Would you remove those things? Would you show us what they are and would you help us communicate that with others?

36:26 Amen. And now if you'd be so bold, will you reach out to somebody this week and talk to them about it? You can text them right now. I won't be offended if I see a bunch of people look down at their phones. But reach out to somebody.

36:43 Say something like, hey, I wanna draw nearer to God. I'm recognizing that I have this impediment in my life and I wanna discuss it with you. I guarantee you have that conversation with a brother or sister in Christ and you're gonna bless their socks off. And you'll both be encouraged and you'll both be more mature through the process. Because as I said earlier, our tendency is to want God's stuff, not God.

37:07 Even the blessings that he gives. And it's usually because we don't trust that he has our greatest good for us. That was true in the garden and for many of us it's true of how we think about heaven. But keep in mind this isn't Looney Tunes. A biblical view of heaven is not us bouncing around on the clouds with harps.

37:26 A biblical view of heaven is God in perfect communion with us and us in perfect communion with each other. Here it is in Revelation 21, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold the tabernacle of God is among the people and he will dwell among them and they shall be his people and God himself will be among them. And he'll wipe away every tear. There'll be no pain, no death, no mourning or crying for those things will pass away. That's communion with God.

38:01 That's joy, church. So how's your relationship with God right now? Seriously, take a moment and think about that. How is your relationship with God? When Adam and Eve tried to hide from God in shame, God called out to them, where are you?

38:23 And God knew where they were. But God was making clear to them, did they know where they were in relationship to God? I ask you today, do you know where you are in relationship to God? Maybe even jot a couple notes down about how you're feeling with your relationship with God. Do you want more of God?

38:44 Do you fear he's angry with you? Does he feel distant or disappointed in you? Or do you know the truth that God delights in you if you are in Christ? That if you believe that Jesus died for your sins that you have God in you in the Holy Spirit. I'll invite the band back up and close this out.

39:12 But as we do that, I want you to close your eyes just for a moment, and I want you to create a picture in your mind of your relationship with God. What does he look like? What do you feel? Angry? Distant?

39:30 Disappointed? No. The truth is that God loves you. For a long time, I thought that Christ being my legal advocate meant that he was up there with the father going, God, Brad did it again. He had a bad quiet time.

39:50 He hasn't been as generous as I've called him to be. And he was mean to his kids. Could you forgive him just this one more time? I promise he'll do better. Because it's me, it's Jesus.

40:00 But that's not it at all. When Jesus bought me, he knew everything about me. He knew all of my flaws, all of my sins, all of my struggles. But because I have placed my my trust in the righteousness of Jesus instead of in the righteousness of Brad, when God looks at me, he can forget my sin. When he looks at me, he sees his son Jesus.

40:23 He not only doesn't see my sin, he sees the righteousness of Christ. So churches, we start singing. If you wanna do business with God, if you wanna spend some time, stay in your seat. We're not gonna think you're weird. Ask God to show you the truth about him.

40:44 To draw you nearer to him. Experience the warmth in your soul that comes from knowing that you have the Holy Spirit in you. And that's how we can love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, strength. And then that's how we go out these doors and have a great week of worship. Thank you so much, church.

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Fear Of Not Being Enough Identity In Christ Knowing God Personally Quiet Time What Is Love

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