Essentials, Part 4

How does show His love for Man?

Teaching #4. October 8, 2006.

I am posting my notes on Pastor Mike’s teaching from Sunday, October 8th. These are MY notes. Not a transcript. Not his notes. Any misquotes, mistakes, or mystifications are my fault (or something like that). All verses are from NASB 1995 unless noted.

Also. There are several times in the notes below that Mike quotes a passage without necessarily giving the scripture. I put the scripture and/or scripture reference in.

How does God show Himself, and His love, to broken humanity?

Have you ever tried to convince someone that you love them, if they do not believe you? God is trying to reach out to us, to tell us of His love.

However, we are busy thinking about ourselves, and what others may be thinking about us. We do not believe them where they try to tell us that they love or that they approve of us. Yet we desperately desire their approval. We were designed to bask in the love and approval of God. But we are broken.

1 Corinthians 13:12. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

We see “in a mirror darkly,” even on our best days. We only see little glimpses of Him. We have trouble seeing His love and approval. God desires us to see Him. We are like a person with very poor eyesight.

What are some of the ways that God has come to us and revealed Himself to us?

In Genesis 3:1-19, according to the story of the Fall, we exchanged the abundance and blessing of the Garden of Eden for hard-labor and the curse of the Fall. God commanded us to be fruitful and multiply, but we exchanged that for childbirth with pain and difficulty.

In the Garden, Eve was the perfect helpmate. On the other side of the Fall, we now remain married only with great labor. It is not labor to maintain a relationship, especially one such as marriage.

In the Garden, Adam and Eve had joy in their labor: tending the Garden, naming the animals, being with each other, being with God.

Also, Adam and Eve had a God-given purpose in life. Do we struggle with purpose? On the other side of the Fall, of the Garden, of the apple, we struggle with purpose. “Young people, what are going to do with your lives?”

Adam and Eve had a relationship with God that was easy and open. They talked with one another. On the other side, they (and we) hid from God. Fallen man hid, fallen man blame-laid, fallen man found fault with God and God’s creation.

So man falls headlong into total self-absorption.

Genesis 4:1-8. Cain and Abel. Cain envied Abel’s relationship with God. He envied God’s approval of Abel. All he had to do was to “do good.” But he killed Abel instead.

Genesis 6:5-6
5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.

The knowledge of good and evil that Man had acquired did nothing to help man see God. It did nothing to help Man be good. And God grieved over His creation.

Genesis 6:7-8
7 The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.”
8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

God grieved, but...

But what? “Noah found grace...”

Genesis 9:1-2
1 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
2 “The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given.

Again, “be fruitful and multiply.” God’s purpose had not changed.

Genesis 9:9-17
9 “Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you;
10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth.
11 “I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations;
13 I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.
14 “It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud,
15 and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh.
16 “When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”
17 And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

God establishes His covenant with Noah and Man. God’s rainbow is the sign of that covenant.

A covenant is a promise with some sort of sign or exchange.

Why didn’t God wipe out everyone and start over? Because of His love and because he found one person, Noah, who would listen to Him. So he made an agreement, a covenant, with him that Man and the whole earth would live. God locked Himself into an agreement to love the whole earth.

Since then, he has chose to pusue us with His love. He has pursued all of Noah’s descendents with His love. He could have wiped us out, but He has chose to love us.

The Promise (#1).

Genesis 12:1-3
1 Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
2 And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
3 And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

Abram had a promise that God was going to bless the whole earth through him.

The Promise (#2)

Genesis 15:4
4 Then behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.”

The promise of a son to carry who will carry out the first promise.

The Covenant

Genesis 17:1-5
1 Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him,
“I am God Almighty;
Walk before Me, and be blameless.
2 “I will establish My covenant between Me and you,
And I will multiply you exceedingly.”
3 Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying,
4 “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you,
And you will be the father of a multitude of nations.
5 “No longer shall your name be called Abram,
But your name shall be Abraham;
For I will make you the father of a multitude of nations.

Abram becomes Abraham.

Genesis 17:15-16
15 Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name.
16 “I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”

Sarai becomes Sarah.

God comes to people. He makes agreements with them. He makes exchanges: new names, fruitfulness for barrenness, promises for despair. He reveals Himself to people and blesses them.

Another Covenant

Exodus 6:1-4
1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for under compulsion he will let them go, and under compulsion he will drive them out of his land.”
2 God spoke further to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord;
3 and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name, Lord, I did not make Myself known to them.
4 “I also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they sojourned.

God had given Abraham land and promises. Here, He is exchanged His own names. He had been known to Abraham as “God Almighty.” Now, He was revealing Himself to Moses as “the Lord” (YHWH). He reveals Himself by revealing His names.

Did He do this because God has trouble revealing Himself, or because Man has trouble seeing Him.

God gave Israel a sign, circumcision. But not all who received the sign obeyed God or looked for His blessing.

Deuteronomy 6:1-3
1 “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it,
2 so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.
3 “O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

God revealed Himself to Israel by giving them His laws. “If you live this way (according to the commandments, etc.) you will be blessed.” These commandments, etc., came from God through a man, Moses. God showed His love for His people by blessing them with the Law.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9
4 “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!
5 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
6 “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.
7 You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.
8 “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.
9 “You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

In other words, “Do as I say.” Why? Because God orders it? No. Because He reveals His love for them, showing that He is concerned about all of the details of their (and our) lives.

This is just the old covenants. Not the new covenant that we live under.

The New Covenant

Jeremiah 31:31-34
31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
34 “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

The new covenant (the one that Jesus made). He “took them by the hand” is a statement of His love and His tenderness for Israel. He was like a husband to them, which is another picture of tenderness.

Under the new covenant, he would show Himself and His love for His people.