THE “BLESSED GOD”
& OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM (I Tim. 1:11)
INTRODUCTION:
It is the Christmas Season, a time when we afresh consider the value of our closest relationships. We think of family, send cards, plan trips etc., all relating to those with whom we have close relationships.
1 CLASS QUESTION: With what individuals do we have our closest relationships? (Answer: father, mother, sibling, child, friend, spouse)
2. TABLE QUESTION: What are the key ingredients to a close, intimate relationship with another individual?
Answer: Trust, love, ability to listen, other-centered, openness, empathy, caring etc.
3. “Out of their tortured history, the Jews demonstrate the most surprising lesson of all: you cannot go wrong personalizing God. God is not a blurry power living somewhere in the sky, not an abstraction like the Greeks proposed, not a sensual super-human like the Romans worshiped, and definitely not the absentee watchmaker of the Deists. God is personal. He enters into people’s lives, messes with families, shows up in unexpected places, chooses unlikely leaders, calls people to account. Most of all, God loves” (Phil Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, page 33).
4. God is a person. We were created in God’s image:
a. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen. 1:27).
b. We have mind, emotion, will. By reverse engineering we know that God, too, must have mind, emotion and will. God is a person.
CULTIVATING A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
1. God pictures himself in each of the roles of those with whom we have our closest relationships:
a. FATHER: “Thou, O Lord, art our father (Isa. 63:16); Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand (Isa. 64:8); This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name … (Mt. 6:9).
b. MOTHER: As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem” (Isa. 66:13).
c. BROTHER: For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people (Heb. 2:17).
Though now ascended up on high, / He bends on earth a brother’s eye. / Partaker of the human name, / He knows he frailty of our frame.
d. HUSBAND: For your maker is your husband – The Lord Almighty is His name (Isa. 54:5).
e. FRIEND: Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command (John 15:13-14).
i. He who for men their surety stood, / And poured on earth His precious blood. / Pursues in heaven His mighty plan. / The Savior and the Friend of man.
ii. What a friend we have in Jesus, / All our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry / Everything to God in prayer / …. (Third verse) Are we weak and heavy laden, / Cumbered with a load of care? — / Precious Savior still our refuge, — / Take it to the Lord in prayer. / Do thy friends despise, forsake thee? / Take it to the Lord in prayer; / In His arms He’ll take and shield thee, / Thou wilt find a solace there.
2. God as a person playing all these roles has a wide range of emotions.
a. God can be happy … “the blessed God.” that conforms to the glorious gospel of THE BLESSED GOD, which he entrusted to me (I Tim. 1:11).
i. Two words for “blessed” in the Greek. One is eulogeo from logos and means to speak well of, to praise, to celebrate with praises.
ii. The other: makarios which can also mean happy. For example I Cor. 7:40: In my judgment, she is happier if she stays as she is–and I think that I too have the Spirit of God. Also the New Testament in Basic English, Phillips Translation, The Emphasized New Testament and the Amplified Bible all translate the word “blessed” in the beatitudes as “happy.” “Happy are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Happy are those who mourn …” (Mt. 5:3-4). God is personal and has emotions. He experiences joy, happiness.
b. The flip side, is that God can experience pain, sorrow.
The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain (Gen. 6:5-6).
So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them. It broke his heart (Gen. 6:6 NLT). But they rebelled, and vexed his holy Spirit . . . (Isa. 63:10). And grieve not the holy Spirit of God . . . (Eph. 4:30). And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it (Lk. 19:41).
“Jesus gives God a face, and that face is streaked with tears” (Phil Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, page. 209.
We remember that He has mind and will—but forget that He has emotions too.
APPLICATION (SO WHAT?): So how does the fact that God is a person with emotions like us affect our relationship with Him?
1. Our actions and attitudes impact God, are important to Him.
“To the prophet, God does not reveal himself in an abstract absoluteness, but in a personal and intimate relation to the world. He does not simply command and expect obedience; He is also moved and affected by what happens in the world, and reacts accordingly. Events and human actions arouse in him joy or sorrow, pleasure or wrath…. Man’s deeds may move Him, affect Him, grieve Him or, on the other hand, gladden and please Him … the God of Israel is a God Who loves, a God Who is known to, and concerned with, man. He not only rules the world in majesty of his might and wisdom, but reacts intimately to the events of history” (Abraham Heschel, The Prophets as in The Bible Jesus Read, page 33)
…If the Old Testament’s overwhelming lesson about God is that he is personal and intimate, its overwhelming lesson about human beings is that we matter. What we say, how we behave, even what we think and feel –these things have an enormous effect on God. They have in fact cosmic implications (Phil Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, page 35).
We must focus on maintaining and cultivating our relationship with God as we do with our human family.
a. Are we trusting Him, loving Him, listening to His cares and concerns, empathizing with the burden of His heart, being other-centered in the relationship, vulnerable to Him etc.?
b. “David and the other psalmist seem stunned by the notion that a God “high up” in the heavens could care about what happens on this puny planet, but again and again God irrefutably proves it to them. The message that our actions do matter practically defines the Old Testament. We profoundly affect God. (Phil Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, pg. 36).
2. Since our acts profoundly affect God and cause him joy or pain, every act of ours must be referred to God.
C.S. Lewis has said, ideally being a practicing Christian “means that every single act and feeling, every experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, must be referred to God” (Phil Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, pg. 132).
3. Since God feels deeply about our relationship with Him, we need to interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to this relationship.
a. As one of his conclusions from his study of Deuteronomy, Phil Yancey wrote, “Nothing, apparently, bothers God more than the simple act of being forgotten” (Phil Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read, pg. 88.
b. “Worship is the time and place that we assign for deliberate attentiveness to God—not because he’s confined to time and place but because our self-importance is so insidiously relentless that if we don’t deliberately interrupt ourselves regularly, we have no chance of attending to him at all at other times in other places” (Eugene Peterson, Leap Over the Wall).
c. This is the real reason God set aside one day in seven, this is the real reason for keeping Sunday free from buying, selling, professional sports, personal activities etc. It is our one day to focus on our relationship with God.
4. God is the “blessed” (happy) God of I Timothy 1:11 but also can be the God whose heart is filled with pain as in Gen. 6:6.
a. The real question for us: Are we causing God great pain or do our life, actions bring Him great joy.
The LORD your God is with you, … He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zeph. 3:17).