Sermon Central
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God Wants A Relationship Woth Us Series
Contributed by Gordon Weatherby on Sep 14, 2023 (message contributor)
Summary: This is the fourth in a series of five messages dealing with the theme "The Five Most Important Teachings Of The Word Of God"
THE FIVE GREATEST TEACHINGS OF THE WORD OF GOD
(Message 4 of 5)
“GOD WANTS RELATIONSHIP WITH US”
Video Link to Message:
https://youtu.be/79pX-4Gx_wA?si=2SCyQz5d_G8Nf7wi
Greenmount and O’Leary Churches of Christ
September 09, 2023
INTRODUCTION:
1) For a few weeks now we have been looking at what I consider to be the five most important teachings of the Word of God.
A) We have seen that:
aa.) “A Loving God has created this world.”
ab.) “Man Needs A Saviour.”
ac.) “Jesus is both the Almighty God, as well as Man Our Saviour.”
B) Today in the fourth message of this series I want us to see that “God wants a relationship with us.”
ba.) The question I ask is Why?
baa.) When God is the Creator, and we are the creation it seems strange that God would want a relationship with us.
.01) We are his inferiors.
.011) There is absolutely no answer from a logical point of view that Almighty God would want to be in a relationship with us, and yet He does.
.02) We are sinful and have treated God with wickedness, sin contempt, and everything else that is undesirable to a holy God.
.021) When we consider all these things why in the world would God want to have fellowship with us, much less to be in a relationship with us?
03) Crazy as it sounds, the God who created us loves us, and wants to be in a relationship with us.
.031) Even before God created us, he knew what we would be like if we were allowed to have our own free will, and yet He still desired to have a relationship with his creation.
2) I want to suggest a few reasons today as to why God would want to have a relationship with us.
I) GOD IS LOVE.
• 1 John 4:7-8, 10-11, 16-21
1) The very central characteristic of God is that He is love.
A) The fact that God is love in no way interferes with his holiness, justice, or any of these other qualities of God.
aa.) In fact, God uses these attributes in the directives of his love.
2) God’s purpose in the creation of man was to have a being with whom He could share his love.
A) Our first reaction to that could be “That is awful needy of God.
aa.) In fact, to hear that we could easily put God down on our level with our own need for love and for acceptance.
aaa.) To do so would be to misunderstand both God, and the very principle of God’s love.
B) Truth is not that God is needy, or in need of our love or anything else that we have to give to him.
ba.) Love is not something that God needs from any of us.
bb.) While God has created us to be the recipients of His Love which is the very character of God, Love does not boost the ego of God.
bc.) Our love does not in any way make God more God than He already is, nor will the absence of our love give him an inferiority complex.
bd.) In fact our giving and receiving of the Love of God is more for our benefit, than for the benefit of God.
bda.) Don’t get me wrong; God wants our love, and enjoys it when we love and serve Him, but God in no ways needs our love.
3) God has created man in his image as the supreme part of creation.
A) In fact, when God made man, we were the last piece of his creation to be created.
B) The entirety of all creation was designed and made to provide the very best for the part of creation that had been made in His image.
ba.) Even before anything else had ever been created, God already had in his mind the humanity as the supreme part of his creation.
bb.) Before there was a human on earth, and even before the world had been created, God had decided to create man in his own image.
bba.) there was a world, God even then had love in his heart for mankind.
bc.) All creation had been designed for the human race.
bca.) When the animals and birds, and all else had been created, God brought them all to Adam so that Adam could name them.
.01) Genesis 2:19-20
.02) Certainly God could have named the animal world himself.
.03) Yet God gave to man the privilege of naming the birds and the animals as an act of His love, and to show that like God, man was to have dominion over all creation.
.031) Genesis 1:28
C) We are the only part of this world who consciously decides to worship and to love God, or to reject Him.
