Beloved - Lesson 3

Beloved  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  15:21
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Jesus is God’s Beloved

At his baptism, before his major work - God gave him his identity, Beloved, Son of God!

You are Beloved.

Last week we discussed how God loves you! He gives you your identity. He gets to define you, not anything else sets that stage.
We live knowing and operating out of that truth - we are deeply loved by God.
That should motivate EVERYTHING we do!
Wake up with enthusiasm
Find the good in life
Believe that you are good, lovable, loved, confident, gifted, purposeful, etc.
Share with others.
Treat others with respect.
Not tied to selfishness.
That leads to another major truth to consider. If God loves you regardless of if we deserve it -

God views everyone as Beloved.

Here’s a story for you:
~The Fugitive and the Rabbi~ One day a young fugitive, trying to hide himself from the enemy, entered a small village. The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the soldiers who sought the fugitive asked where he was hiding, everyone became very fearful. The soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every person in it unless the young man was handed over to them before dawn. The people went to the Rabbi and asked him what to do. Torn between handing over the boy to the enemy and having his people killed, the Rabbi withdrew to his room and read his Bible, hoping to find an answer before dawn. In the early morning, his eyes fell on these words: “It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.” Then the Rabbi closed the Bible, called the soldiers, and told them where the boy was hidden. And after the soldiers led the fugitive away to be killed, there was a feast in the village because the Rabbi had saved the lives of the people. But the Rabbi did not celebrate. Overcome with a deep sadness, he remained in his room. That night an angel came to him and asked, “What have you done?” He said: “I handed over the fugitive to the enemy.” Then the angel said: “But don’t you know that you have handed over the Messiah?” “How could I know?” the Rabbi replied anxiously. Then the angel said: “If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.”
Are we not challenged in daily life to look deeper into the eyes of the people we encounter—even those who are running away from something—and to see in them the face of God? Perhaps just knowing that they too are beloved children of God will be enough to prevent us from handing them over to the enemy. Are we not also challenged and encouraged to look more deeply at the way God sees us—beloved, accepted, affirmed, and worthy of salvation? Are we, like the fugitive, reflections of the Messiah? ---
In God’s eyes…____are beloved:
You
Your mom
your neighbor
your favorite cousin
your least favorite cousin
your best friend
your teachers, coaches, principals
Your crush
Your ex
Your swown enemy
The people you do know
the people you don’t know
The people who want to help you in life
the people who want to hurt you in life
God knows the good in everyone. He created us all to be His beloved! Some people in the world are bad. They are just plain evil.
God still views them as his beloved. He knows that he created them to be good, that sin has brought destruction and deception to their life. He wants to save them just like he saves each of us.
Let that sink in for a few minutes. God views everyone, every single one, as Beloved.
What if we viewed people as God seems them?
Several times throughout the story of Jesus it tries to sum up what Jesus feels for mankind. It says, “Jesus had compassion on them”
Mark 6:34 ESV
34 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.
Jesus sees people differently. He doesn’t see people as criminals, he sees them as creations. he doesn’t seem them as bothersome, but as beautiful. He doesn’t turn a blind eye, he sees them. He doesn’t just notice, he doesn’t just say “that’s sad” he is moved to compassion and does something! Every time Jesus is “moved to compassion” in the gospels Jesus follows that up with doing something to make things better for the people he feels compassion for. He sometimes heals them, feeds them, teaches them, one cool example, he sends out his disciples to go reach others.
Isn’t that our job today? To be sent out as Jesus’ hands and feet and compassionately serve the world around us?
John 13:34–35 NIV
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This is it right here.
You hear me say, you are beloved by God. The question last week, was do you believe it? Do you live that way? Or do you get caught in cycles of doubt, discouragement, disbelief? I’ve been there! We need to keep working on that, but tonight I want to keep expanding this mind-blowing perspective.
But it doesn’t stop with just us understanding that we are Beloved. The whole world needs to hear that they are beloved by God.
Tonight, i’m telling you, God dearly loves every single individual. Here’s the crucial question: Do you love others the way God loves others? Do people see that truth about God (and his love for them) in your life? Do people know that you follow Jesus because of your love for others?
1 John 4:7–11 NIV
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Because we are given the identity of the Beloved, we are free to to love freely. We don’t have to fight to fill ourselves, to be valued like the world demands us to fight for.
1 John 3:16–18 NIV
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
Hard word. Jesus loves you. and Jesus loves everyone. We should be be obsessed with loving others. When was the last time you sacrificed anything for someone else?
You are God’s Beloved. God dearly loves everyone. As we desire to become more like Jesus, we must become more loving.
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