Becoming Whole Relationships with others

Jonathan McGuire

Becoming Whole • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

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Summary of Becoming Whole

Good morning! Last Sunday, JoHana being in town we celebrated as a family our Christmas. It was a great time together and being with my dad as the Chiefs won the Super Bowl was a GREAT Christmas present.

Let me recap where we have been in this series of becoming whole. Our desire is to discover how we were created.

If we can understand our original design as humans, then function according to this design, then we believe we will be functioning at our greatest.

(Show picture Wheel)

We started by understanding God is this picture. Cameron then showed us the make up of humans and that is our mind, affections, will, and bodies.

In this, we compared naturalism and gnosticism.

Naturalism is that this is all there is. We are just here on this earth and there is nothing more. We need to make the most of it because this is it.

The opposite of this is Gnosticism

Gnosticism: We are spirit beings and we are just hoping and enduring until we leave this earth.

Our desire is to understand God’s design for us here in the natural and his design for us in the Spirit. Once we understand these things we want to function according to how he designed us.

So we spent 3 weeks on the top spoke of this wheel. The top spoke is God. How do we relate to God with our mind, affections, wheel and body.

We established that God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden. We established the argument as Garden of Eden as the first temple and Adam and Eve where told to guard and watch over the temple.

After the fall of man we saw the progression of God desiring to be with His people. First we see the Tabernacle and God is there. Then we see the Temple and behind the Holy of holies God is there.

Jesus comes to Earth and he pitched his tent among us(Jesus tabernacled among us) God is there.

Jesus dies on the cross and the vale of the temple is torn in two and now we have direct access through Jesus to live and dwell in the presence of Jesus.

We see the Spirit dwells now inside our bodies and our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and together we collectively make up the Body of Christ.

We long and hope for Jesus’s return when we will be with him forever and be with him again and live and dwell with Jesus forever.

Last week, we learned that as our bodies make of the temple of the Holy Spirit, then we are to glorify God.

Is it not absolutely amazing that we as God’s creation get to live in the Holy of holies but that we also get to reflect or shine the Glory of the Lord.

2 Corinthians 3:10–18 HCSB

10 In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison because of the glory that surpasses it. 11 For if what was fading away was glorious, what endures will be even more glorious. 12 Therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness. 13 We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the Israelites could not stare at the end of what was fading away, 14 but their minds were closed. For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ. 15 Even to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts, 16 but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:10-

The old Covenant came with so much Glory that when Moses would place a veil over his face so that the Israelites could not see it fading as it was.

We don’t veil our faces because of the work that Jesus did on the cross allows us to live in the presence of Jesus.

This is where the natural and the spiritual collide in how God designed us

2 Corinthians 3:

2 Corinthians 3:18 HCSB

18 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.

We are looking as a mirror into the glory of the Lord and we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

We are designed to reflect the Glory of the Lord. This changes everything for us as Christ followers. We are to be obedient followers of Jesus that if everything we do on this Earth we do it in such a way that reflects the Glory of God.

Husbands: how you lead in the home and how you love your wife and kids is to reflect the Glory of the Lord.

Wives: how you love your husbands and how you love your children is to reflect the Glory of the Lord.

Employees: Your work should be done in such a way that reflects the Glory of the Lord.

Children: how you love your parents is to reflect the Glory of the Lord.

Church: how we handle each other and how we talk with each other and love each other we are to reflect the Glory of the Lord.

Individuals: how we care for our selves and our bodies we are to reflect the Glory of the Lord.

Community: In community how we handle others we are to reflect the Glory of the Lord.

Creation: how we care for creation we are to reflect the Glory of the Lord.

So we have spent 3 weeks looking at this top spoke. This top spoke is how God created us and designed us to function in relationship with him.

When the top spoke starts to bend a little bit and we don’t function to how God designed us then everything starts to get out of balance.

Things will get out of balance when we think we exist for us or we don’t recognize God as the top priority of our lives. Things get out of balance.

Things get out of balance when we start to think we don’t need church anymore. We can get church from other things and we don’t need to meet as says we do. You let this spoke get out of balance and our minds, affections, wills and bodies start to get out of balance.

This morning we move to another piece of this wheel.

Others

“There is a universal human need for healthy relationships, whether we are single or married, young or old, rich or poor. We all are deeply hardwired for community, so much that if we don’t have it our entire personhood, including our bodies, suffers in ways that scientists are just now beginning to understand. For example, a physical therapist describes his biggest challenges as follows:

My biggest challenge is that many of my patients don’t really believe in some of my remedies for their pain. Some patients have a purely physical problem, and they need physical remedies. But many patients have pain that lasts long after their injuries have healed. Scientists aren’t completely sure why the pain persists, but we have learned that being in supportive relationships contributes to the pain going away.

For example, I had a patient who had experienced a minor back injury, but his pain persisted long after the injury had healed. When I inquired about his life, it became clear to me that he was very lonely. I knew he wouldn’t believe me when I told him that his loneliness was contributing to the persistence of his back pain.

“ So I told him that he needed to walk for exercise and that he should ask his friend to walk with him every evening to hold him accountable. The patient didn’t really need to walk. He just needed to be less lonely. Two weeks later he came back and exclaimed, “The exercise worked! My pain is gone!”20

This is not an isolated incident. Researchers are finding that having positive relationships with others dramatically impacts our bodies, leading to lower blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer, and to more rapid healing from injuries.21 The effects are particularly strong for children from the time they are in the womb through age five, as the quality of their relationships, particularly with their parents, dramatically affects the development of their brains and nervous systems, with comprehensive implications for their entire personhoods for the rest of their lives.22”

Excerpt From: Brian Fikkert & Kelly M. Kapic. “Becoming Whole.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/becoming-whole/id1420313463

What was God’s design for us when it comes to others?

God designed us to live in relationship with others.

Genesis 2:18 HCSB

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper as his complement.”

“Human beings are designed to know one another deeply and to love one another as much as we love ourselves. Our relationship to others should reflect the love of God, the same love that exists from all eternity between the Father, Son, and Spirit; this love is what ultimately overflows and is manifested powerfully in the sacrifice of Christ on a cross for us. In our fallen world, this love now normally requires identification and sacrifice. God so loved he gave ().”

Excerpt From: Brian Fikkert & Kelly M. Kapic. “Becoming Whole.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/becoming-whole/id1420313463

God designed us to love one another as much as we love ourselves.

I would encourage you for just a second to take a look around this room and think God designed you to love everyone in this room as much as you love yourself.

What if you was to take out your cell phone and get on Facebook, then start scrolling and looking at your friends then think to yourself God designed you to love the people on your facebook feed as much as you love yourself.

How?

You see some people in this room and some people on my facebook don’t act think like I think and if I am going to love those people as much as I love myself but yet they don’t think like me it can become very difficult.

1 John 4:9–12 HCSB

9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.

1 John 4:7–16 HCSB

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us. 13 This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit. 14 And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world’s Savior. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. 16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.

God is love

v.7-8

Love is not God but God is Love

There is a huge difference and this truth has major implications in our lives. The enemy would like us to believe that love is God. We are just to love everyone and everything.

Scripture is clear here that God is love. Just because you “love” does not necessarily mean that your love is holy.

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Eight: Getting to the Bottom of Love (1 John 4:1–16)

It has accurately been said that “love does not define God, but God defines love.”

God is love and His love is holy love.

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Eight: Getting to the Bottom of Love (1 John 4:1–16)

Much that is called “love” in modern society bears no resemblance or relationship to the holy, spiritual love of God. Yet we see banners saying “God is love!” displayed at many festivals, particularly where young people are “doing their own thing”—as if one could dignify immorality by calling it “love.”

God is love and because he is love this love is spiritual and holy.

verse 7 scripture calls us to love one another because love is from God and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Verse 8 The one who does not love does not know God.

We come back to the spokes on the wheel. We are called to love others and when our love for others is not there things start to again get out of balance.

Some people are hard to love.

Right?

How do we love others as God who is love designed us to love?

Notice the word know in verse 7

1 John 4:7 HCSB

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

The word know here is a much deeper meaning than simply intellectual acquaintance or understanding.

The verb know is used to describe the intimate union of husband and wife.

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Eight: Getting to the Bottom of Love (1 John 4:1–16)

To know God means to be in a deep relationship to Him—to share His life and enjoy His love. This knowing is not simply a matter of understanding facts; it is a matter of perceiving truth

This knowing is a personal experience of God.

It does not do a husband or wife much good to know everything about their spouse but never be with them.

Our love for others starts from knowing God because God is love. This is a daily experience of getting to know God better and better. The more we strive to know God and spend time with him and studying his word we then become Christlike.

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Eight: Getting to the Bottom of Love (1 John 4:1–16)

A large quantity of radioactive material was stolen from a hospital. When the hospital administrator notified the police, he said: “Please warn the thief that he is carrying death with him, and that the radioactive material cannot be successfully hidden. As long as he has it in his possession, it is affecting him disastrously!”

A person who claims he knows God and is in union with Him must be personally affected by this relationship. A Christian ought to become what God is, and “God is love.” To argue otherwise is to prove that one does not really know God!

God’s sacrifice of His Son for us

1 John 4:9–11 HCSB

God’s love is active. God revealed his love to us in this way. God doesn’t just say that he loves us and that’s it.

God revealed His love through His One and Only Son that he sent into the world

that

We might live through him.

We didn’t love God but God loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

1 John 3:8 HCSB

8 The one who commits sin is of the Devil, for the Devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the Devil’s works.

We didn’t love God but God loved us. Jesus took away our sins and destroyed the work of the devil in our lives at THE CROSS.

Christ was sent in the world not because man deserved for him to die for us but because of God’s love for us.

I said earlier that sometimes loving others is hard and that sometimes others are hard to love.

Guess what?

You are hard to love.

God’s love for you was so great that he sent his son Jesus to rescue you from sin.

It is amazing that we get to reflect the Glory of God in our lives. It is amazing that we live under the New Covenant always in the Holy of holies.

This is not possible because of us. This is not possible because of our actions.

When Jesus died on the cross, it was then that the veil was torn in two from top to bottom. It was his sacrifice that made a way for you.

It is through the death of Jesus that we live. Jesus’s death rescues us from death.

The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. Jesus came that we might have life.

Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. The death of Jesus makes it possible for us to be forgiven for our sin.

1 John 4:11 HCSB

11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.

God loved us that he sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins then if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.

The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Eight: Getting to the Bottom of Love (1 John 4:1–16)

To love one another simply out of a sense of duty is good, but to love out of appreciation (rather than obligation) is even better.

Loving others out of appreciation comes from recognizing the truth that Jesus loved you when you didn’t deserve it and people who don’t think like you need the love of Jesus as much as you need the love of Jesus.

We start to show love out of appreciation when we appreciate what Christ has done for us on the cross.

We recognize our depravity it helps us to have love and grace for others.

“All of us stand before God as the weak, the needy, the broken, and the hurting. So we stand before one another, not in arrogant judgment, but as sinful humans all dependent upon the grace of God. All of this liberates us to love others well.”

Excerpt From: Brian Fikkert & Kelly M. Kapic. “Becoming Whole.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/becoming-whole/id1420313463