Let's be relational

Our relationship with God is a witness of the Gospel

Romans 3:21-31

Matthew 7:7-11

Welcome again everyone,

Sunday morning, I hope we’ve all been getting some good sleep! But I’m sure if you haven’t been getting good sleep, you’ve been up all night making good decisions. Good rationale, Biblical decisions.

And hopefully you were thinking, ah there’s something missing in my decision making process!!

Well good news! There is! and you’re in the right place to find out what that is!

But before we get to that, let’s come to God for help, let’s pray.

Dear God,

Have you ever done something so wild, so crazy, and you did it, all on account of love. All motivated for love.

Well, one time, as a hopeless romantic teenager, I fell in love.

Now you have to understand that I grew up on 90’s romantic comedies. So I was trained to be a little bit over the top.

At the time I was driving a ute, a little Ford Courier. And in the back tray I had my beloved cow spotted couch. I had a couple of mates and with a picnic box and candles ready, we headed down to the local lake, on the lake was a pier and at the end of that pier we put my cow couch down, setup the candles and picnic, told my lads to be gone, and waited patiently on the couch, on the pier, in this very public downtown Auckland lake, waiting for my date to arrive.

I mean, that had everything, effort, gesture, class, it was a 90’s romantic movie to a tee.

Such is the power of love to drive us to do funny stuff.

And this example that, I prepared for this moment all those years ago. Is really a testament from my life that sometimes we do stuff that is neither rationale, nor Biblical. But we do things simple because we have a desire to. Something inside us compels us to act and therefore thinking doesn’t seem to play much of a part in the process.

This morning, we are talking exactly about that feeling inside that drives us to action, even when it doesn’t make seem to make sense.

And we will do that by understanding first, who God is. For it is as we get to know God more we see what compels him most is his relational love that he desires to give.

this understanding of who God is, will help us to understand who we are, especially who we are in relation with God

Which will give us the third framework we need in order to process the decisions we make, that we would make the good choice more and more.

So first, let’s look to:

The Relational God

The Trinity

We ought to ask of the Bible, who is this God that you teach us about?

Now when we ask the Bible that question, we might be overwhelmed with information. Simply because the whole Bible is given to describe God, so naturally there’s a whole lot to find out.

But there is a very important yet incredibly difficult to get your head around aspect of who God is that makes everything else about God make sense.

And that is the Triune God.

One God in three persons. It is entirely true to say God is Father, God is Jesus, God is the Holy Spirit. And it’s also entirely true to say that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are themselves distinct.

And that will confuse you, that’s okay, it simply affirms that you are in fact not God. But the point of bringing that up is to say that God exists as one God, forever together in an eternal relationship with each distinct person of God. Which is sustained by love.

God in relationship, is the basis of his desire to make humanity in the first place. It is simply because God loves that he desires to share his love with humanity.

And it is God’s eternal love that drives him to do all that he does. So when the people that God made as an expression of his love, rebel against him. That’s really tough on God. From his perspective he’s like, wait up everyone, I made you to share my love with you, I made you to be in relationship with me.

Why don’t you love me? Which is something I often say after my own children scream their heads off at me for saying bed time.

And the reality is that sin has come in-between us and God. We’ve mentioned this in each talk now. But it’s not all bad news,

Because of sin and because of God’s love,

He does the exact thing that every 90’s romantic movie hero does. Or maybe its that 90’s romantic movies copy God.

Anyway, God lays his life on the line, he gives himself to be sacrificed in order that our relationship with God could be made good again.

The Triune God, sends Jesus, who is fully God, to take the punishment that is given to anyone who sins. A punishment that we learn in the Bible is death.

And death is the punishment of sin because sin is the rot of a relationship. Relationships are built on trust, built on fellowship, and time together, relationships are places of expressing and receiving love. To bring sin into any relationship is to bring a sometimes slow rot, sometimes quick rot, but a rot that leads only to death.

And we all know this to be true,

How many of us have been hurt by someone in the past? How many of us hurt others in the past? Maybe we lied about someone and they found out. Maybe we took something from someone, maybe we said untrue words that cut someone deep. Or even true words that were used to slander.

Relationships are so hard, making friends is hard, keeping friends is hard, and it’s all hard because of sin. Sin rots the foundation of any relationship. And anyone who has someone in their past that they just wont talk to, knows that sin leads to the death of relationships.

The Gospel

But what about this Tri-une God, this Jesus God man? What did his death achieve and why is he so relevant to the decisions I make?

I hear you, stay on track Joe.

The Gospel is the pinnacle of God’s expression of love towards us. In reality there are two massive expressions of God’s love in the Bible. First, he made us, he gave us life and we are all here today because God first loved us. Second, and this is potentially more important than the first, his second expression of love is that he forgives us.

Look, I don’t mean to get too personal here, but I’ve made a child. And the expression of love towards forming these little critters, is certainly that. My wife and I united in love and through our love for each other produced a child. That’s easy part.

The hard part is living with that child. If only the relationship was an image of the love that my wife and I shared, that would be a great world! Imagine how many children there would be running around.

The reality is that my child sins. I sin. We all sin. And goodness me, some days, it’s really really hard to see the image of love. Which is why, forgiveness is really the ultimate expression of love towards another.

For God to forgive our sin against him. To forgive the rot that forms in our relationship from the desires of our hearts. For him to forgive us is just truly an ultimate expression of how much he loves us. Especially because he has contributed zero sin into the break down of our relationship.

Which is to say, the God who is eternally in relationship as a Tri-une God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, shows what it takes to hold onto a relationship with us. God does everything that it takes in order for us to be forgiven.

Which is the challenge for us, as relational people.

The Relational Person

Made in God’s image

Did you know that you were made in the image of God? Not your looks, but your heart, your character. You and I each bear the image of our Tri-une God. And what is most significant about that image that God has given us?

It’s his love. We have the image of God’s love in our hearts. We love to love others. And we feel this love each day in each of our relationships with friends and family. We also feel the hard side of love, as in, we feel hurt when we are not loved, we feel hurt when we are sinned against.

We even feel guilty for when we sin against others. Because deep down, we know that goes against the love for others that resides in our hearts.

For relationship with God

And furthermore, what it means to be made in the image of God, in the image of his love. Is that we are made to be in a relationship with God. God made us out of an abundance of love, that we would live forever with him in a relationship made of love.

That is exactly the goal of life that Christians who lived many years before our time, came to see as the whole point of this thing we call life. There’s a cool question that the church would train young people up to know the answer in the drop of a hat,

What is the chief end of man?

Write this answer down if you don’t know it by heart.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

What more do we need to understand in order to orient our lives?

Glorify God and enjoy him forever.

See we are relational people, God is a relational God. The church through history has known this truth since God made humanity. It’s now our time to do as many have done before us. Glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Which sets us up well to consider our third framework for making decisions in life. We will now consider how to make the:

The Relational Choice

Glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Thinking relationally is thinking in light of how much we value both, or all, parties of the relationship.

That is to say, In my considering how to approach someone who has wronged me. I ought to consider how much do I value the relationship?

Because if I see no value in the other person and they have wronged me. Well I might not care to treat them with any sense of love. In fact I may swear at them, make some nasty comment, or hit them. What ever I do, if I see no value in our relationship then I wont care that the rot of sin will lead to the death of our relationship. In fact I’ll probably welcome it.

But now lets take that moment and consider God. Imagine if God didn’t value the relationship with us. Imagine if God wasn’t the foundation of love, and he left us in our sin. Because at the end of the day, why not, it’s not like he sinned against us, so why not let us face the death we deserve? Seems about fair.

Ok, calm down you rational thinker!

God is love.

God is love and so God values our relationship even when we don’t value his. God shows us through the Gospel that even though the people he came to save, put him to death. He still loved and valued them fully, he longed for them to see that. Yet as we know, sin leads to death, and so sinful people put Jesus to death, because they didn’t want anymore of the relationship with Jesus.

So the Gospel then shows us, the extreme end of what it means to think not just relationally, but to think about gospel relationships.

And to do this we start with thinking about our relationship with God. And here is the cool part. The Triune God, is not just the Father, and Jesus, but it’s the Holy Spirit too. The Spirit who is still fully God. One God, three persons.

The Spirit is given to us that we would walk together with God everyday of our lives. The Spirit is the God of Creation, living in you, as you live in your life.

Just think about that for a moment. The God of creation, the one who made us in his image has given himself to live in each of us. So I now walk each day with the God side by side.

Do you mean to tell me that I can just talk to God and ask him stuff and live in a super normal relationship with God?

Yes.

We are made to be in relationship with God, and he does all that it takes for that to happen. My sin is forgiven in Jesus name, and because of that forgiveness, God lives with me.

This whole being forgiven thing is pretty massive.

Which is to say, that in order to make the good choice, God gives us his Spirit, and God, through his Spirit, teaches us, instructs us, leads us, loves us.

The Good Choice

Spirit driven

The Good choice then, is really the choice that is made by turning to the Spirit and asking God what he thinks should happen.

Hey God, should I go to the movies with my mates?

God, yellow shirt or green? Thoughts?

God, I really want to marry this girl in my economics class, will you help set me up?

It is just so profound to think that we have all access to the wisdom and love of the one who made the world, access that doesn’t need to be charged overnight, or paid for through a monthly subscription.

We might think our phones can help us, hey Google what do you think? But in reality, the best help we need is the Spirit of God who lives in those who are forgiven in Christ.

So ask God, sit with him and pray.

Then wait and listen. Hear what his Spirit is saying to you, and make a decision with God’s input. That will most certainly lead you to a good choice.

But, hold on! You reformed Presbyterians in the room! I hear you fidgeting in your seats.

What if it’s not the Spirit talking? What if it’s just your stomach saying your hungry? Are you saying we should all hear the voice of God?

And this concern that is raised is valid. Because unfortunately many professing Christians in our cities today, will speak quite candidly about what God has told them, the prophesies they’ve seen, the joy of speaking in angelic language of tongues.

I hear that concern, for it’s true, much abuse of what “God told me to do” has occurred. And it keeps occurring. This concern really highlights the danger of using only the relational framework in our decision making.

Like with our Bible only friends from last nights talk, which leads to legalism. Our Spirit only friends leads to subjectivism. Spirit only people will seek other Spirit only people and together will subjectively affirm decisions of each other, out of a deep love for living in relationship with God.

Which is a good desire, but unfortunately it also exposes a selfishness within the relationship that will lead to sin.

Selfish because, if I were to write you a letter, told you all about myself, gave you lots of stories and examples of who I am, and say this letter became more of a book. Then I send you this book to read, and one day turn up to your place to hang out with you. And you immediately ask me something that I’d already told you in my book.

So I ask, did you read what I sent you? and you say, well, I meant to. I had every intention of doing that, but I figured you were on your way so I’d just ask you now, so no I didn’t read your book.

Which is to say, God has spoken to the world, he’s told the world everything we need to know for us to have a right relationship with him. We are to read what he gave us, it is His word.

But his word without his Spirit, is just a bunch of rules and stories. It’s lifeless and hard to understand. So we need God’s Spirit. His Spirit teaches us about Himself, it illuminates the scriptures that we understand. It brings life to our experience in the Bible.

And so when life's decisions are unclear as to what the Biblical principal is, we should rejoice in the forgiveness of our sins, that our relationship is made right with God, and that God sent his Spirit to guide us.

Rejoice in that because, that is the foundation of our relationships with other people.

When someone wrongs you, or you wrong someone else.

The best first step in decision making process is to rejoice in what God has done for you in Jesus.

second, Glorify God and enjoy him forever.

And ask yourself, what would glorify God in this situation?

Does it glorify God to forgive someone who wronged me?

Yes! The Bible affirms it, God’s Spirit attests to it.

Does it glorify God to seek forgiveness from those you’ve wronged?

Yes! The Bible affirms this and God’s Spirit attests to it.

But what about whether I wear a green shirt or Blue shirt?

What glorifies God?

Both do, both adequately cover your body in such a way that gives honor to yourself and your potential future spouse. So rationally, I’d go with the blue one because you wore green yesterday.

Should I marry this guy I’ve been dating?

He’s a Christian, he likes all the things that I like. He reads his Bible. But I just don’t know if he’s the right one?

I mean, the Bible affirms that he’s a good fit, Christian loves God’s word. And rationally he’s handsome, fit and his family are kind to me. But I’m just not sure, why am I not convinced he’s the one?

And here is where you need to really lean into the Spirit. For this decision, is one that only God can bring true peace into your heart as you make your choice.

And what will God say, how will he say it? Well, that’s up to God. But I have all confidence that if you turn to God and ask him to move your heart, it is in your relationship with God that true peace and joy will abound in the decision you make.

And the big take away for us this weekend, is not to see three frameworks as a decision making tree, that everything we do ought to run through a rigorous process. But rather

The takeaway this weekend, is to live towards your chief end.

Glorify God and enjoy him forever.

That means, read God’s word, with God’s Spirit, and evaluate the world around you in light of all that God has done for you in bringing into a right relationship with him.

Be Rational, Be Biblical, and Be Spiritual.

But do all those for the glory of God and you enjoy him forever.

Let’s pray.