OK, all, here's the lesson I'll be teaching the middle school girls tomorrow morning. :)
Oh How I Love Jesus/M Gathering
Week Two
So, last week, we discussed how we were going to start talking about what it means for us to have a relationship with Jesus, what this actually looks like for us practically in our day-to-day lives. We decided that in order to answer that question, we needed to know a few things first. We needed to know who Jesus was, and we learned that he is the Messiah, the Son of God, our only way to the Father, our Savior through the cross, the One Who was resurrected and defeated sin and death for those who are His, the One Who will return for His people someday, our King who commands our obedience. Then we looked at what a relationship is, and discussed how the basis of our relationship with Jesus was His blood shed on the cross for our sins. Finally, we talked about what it means to be in a relationship. We discussed how we can and should speak to Him through prayer and how important that is, as well as how we can show that we love Him through our obedience, staying in His Word, and bearing fruit for Him.
What we haven’t yet discussed is why we should want to have a relationship with this Jesus. That’s what we’re going to start doing today. I am not going to go through all of the feel-good Sunday school reasons with you. You’ve heard this stuff. Sure, we certainly will talk about His grace, His mercy, and His love for us and how those attributes call us to Him; but we can’t just focus on the “Jesus, meek and mild” as Pastor Nick calls it. There are other attributes that should make us desire Him just as much: His holiness, His righteousness, His justice. Read Psalm 29 with me. Does this seem like a “feel-good Jesus”? No, this is a God mighty and powerful. This is the God we pathetic sinners want to have a relationship with! So, over the next few weeks, that’s what we’re going to be looking at. This week, I want to talk about His holiness and righteousness, and how those are things that make me desire a relationship with Him and how those attributes affect our lives.
What is holy? What does it mean to be holy? How does that affect my relationship with Jesus?
So let’s define the word “holy” or “holiness”. What does that even mean? Well, we know that it means to be set apart. But what does that even mean? His Word says, “Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy. All nations will come and worship You, for Your righteous acts have been revealed.” (Revelation 15:4) Did you catch that? He alone is holy. That means that God is unique, and that holiness is an attribute unique to Him. So what does that mean for us?
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) It means that we are not holy. We are not set apart. They say opposites attract, and I think that’s applicable here. Here’s what I mean by that: while I don’t covet God’s holiness, and I certainly don’t want to be God, because I am not holy, that attribute makes me long for Him. It makes me long to get to know Him better. There is something missing in me that can only be made complete by His holiness. And when I can semi-wrap my mind around this attribute, it makes me fall to my knees. I can never be holy, I can never be like Him, I can never offer anything that would make a God like that look at me, notice me, let alone love me and desire a relationship with me!
So where does that leave us? It leaves us at the foot of the cross, with our eyes fixed upon Jesus and the knowledge of the work He accomplished there. Did you know that because of His work, we can be made holy? Not in the way that God is holy, but in that when God looks at us, He will see us as set apart, drawn out from the rest by His Son, who has laid claim to our hearts. “Blessed be the God and Father our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.” (Ephesians 1:3-4) Can you imagine? Through the cross, God makes sinners holy and blameless! How can you not desire a relationship with Him?
But how does this work for us in our day-to-day? As always, we must turn to His Word for the answer. On a side note, isn’t it lovely that we have an “instruction manual” for our lives all laid out before us? Every answer is here! Second Corinthians says, “For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make My dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’ Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.” (6:16; 7:1) So we see that, as always, it comes back to a matter of obedience to His commandments. And again, this is not a way to earn our salvation or get rewards from Christ; instead, it’s an outworking of what has already been completed in our hearts. It’s a “gift” we give to Christ to honor and glorify Him in thanksgiving for our salvation. The idea in these verses is that as God is holy and set apart, so should we be. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have unbelieving friends; it does mean that you can’t willfully sin along with them. It does mean that you are to be light in the darkness to them to lead them to Christ. It means you are “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph. 4: 22-24)
His holiness goes hand in hand with His righteousness, which is another thing that draws me to Him – another thing I’m not that He is, that He can provide.
What is righteousness? What does it mean to be righteous? How does that affect my relationship with Jesus?
The idea of righteousness carries with it the idea of being “morally upright”, just, and sinless; all things that we are not, but Christ is. Listen to this description of God, now that you know what righteousness is: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before You.” (Psalm 89:14) What a beautiful picture of the One we want to have this relationship with!
And yet, there is a problem. Ecclesiastes says, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” (7:20) Romans 3:10 declares, “None is righteous, no, not one.” So how can the unrighteous have anything to do with the Righteous One? Through faith in the resurrecting, saving power of Christ. “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:18-19)
Do you see how our entire relationship with Christ pivots on His work on the cross? How do we respond to this? Romans 6:12-13 answers that question. “Let not sin therefore remain in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” James also gives us instruction. “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” (1:19-22) You see, Christ’s righteousness covering over us demands a response, and again, that response is obedience to and a delight in His Word. How do we defeat sin and follow Him to have a relationship with Him? We don’t have to! Jesus has already defeated sin on the cross. The war has already been won, but we must partake in the battle. That’s why Paul tells us about the armor of God in Ephesians 6. Wouldn’t you fight for an earthly relationship if it were important to you? How much more should we fight for our relationship with Christ?
Conclusion
Do you see how these two attributes, attributes that we gloss over a lot of times to focus on the “feel-good” ones, are so vital to our relationship with Him? They are the very foundation of our relationship with Him! Do His holiness and His righteousness draw you to Him? Do they increase your desire to know Him, to have an intimate knowledge of Christ and to be intimately known by Him? If so, take joy and do the hard work of fighting for that relationship, knowing that it produces good things. “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that He may come and rain righteousness upon you.” If not, spend some time in prayer and determine why that is. Do you not know Him? Do you not desire Him as He is? Have you made your picture of what you want God to be your idol instead of the one true God? Repent, and believe and seek the God who is.
Lord, thank You for being Who You are. Thank you for Your righteousness and Your holiness. Forgive me for not being grateful enough for those qualities. Thank you for the process of sanctification, Lord, where you're making me more and more like You every day. I pray, Lord, that You will open my eyes to the beauty of these qualities and make me appreciate them and You more and more each day. Amen.
Oh How I Love Jesus/M Gathering
Week Two
So, last week, we discussed how we were going to start talking about what it means for us to have a relationship with Jesus, what this actually looks like for us practically in our day-to-day lives. We decided that in order to answer that question, we needed to know a few things first. We needed to know who Jesus was, and we learned that he is the Messiah, the Son of God, our only way to the Father, our Savior through the cross, the One Who was resurrected and defeated sin and death for those who are His, the One Who will return for His people someday, our King who commands our obedience. Then we looked at what a relationship is, and discussed how the basis of our relationship with Jesus was His blood shed on the cross for our sins. Finally, we talked about what it means to be in a relationship. We discussed how we can and should speak to Him through prayer and how important that is, as well as how we can show that we love Him through our obedience, staying in His Word, and bearing fruit for Him.
What we haven’t yet discussed is why we should want to have a relationship with this Jesus. That’s what we’re going to start doing today. I am not going to go through all of the feel-good Sunday school reasons with you. You’ve heard this stuff. Sure, we certainly will talk about His grace, His mercy, and His love for us and how those attributes call us to Him; but we can’t just focus on the “Jesus, meek and mild” as Pastor Nick calls it. There are other attributes that should make us desire Him just as much: His holiness, His righteousness, His justice. Read Psalm 29 with me. Does this seem like a “feel-good Jesus”? No, this is a God mighty and powerful. This is the God we pathetic sinners want to have a relationship with! So, over the next few weeks, that’s what we’re going to be looking at. This week, I want to talk about His holiness and righteousness, and how those are things that make me desire a relationship with Him and how those attributes affect our lives.
What is holy? What does it mean to be holy? How does that affect my relationship with Jesus?
So let’s define the word “holy” or “holiness”. What does that even mean? Well, we know that it means to be set apart. But what does that even mean? His Word says, “Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy. All nations will come and worship You, for Your righteous acts have been revealed.” (Revelation 15:4) Did you catch that? He alone is holy. That means that God is unique, and that holiness is an attribute unique to Him. So what does that mean for us?
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9) It means that we are not holy. We are not set apart. They say opposites attract, and I think that’s applicable here. Here’s what I mean by that: while I don’t covet God’s holiness, and I certainly don’t want to be God, because I am not holy, that attribute makes me long for Him. It makes me long to get to know Him better. There is something missing in me that can only be made complete by His holiness. And when I can semi-wrap my mind around this attribute, it makes me fall to my knees. I can never be holy, I can never be like Him, I can never offer anything that would make a God like that look at me, notice me, let alone love me and desire a relationship with me!
So where does that leave us? It leaves us at the foot of the cross, with our eyes fixed upon Jesus and the knowledge of the work He accomplished there. Did you know that because of His work, we can be made holy? Not in the way that God is holy, but in that when God looks at us, He will see us as set apart, drawn out from the rest by His Son, who has laid claim to our hearts. “Blessed be the God and Father our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.” (Ephesians 1:3-4) Can you imagine? Through the cross, God makes sinners holy and blameless! How can you not desire a relationship with Him?
But how does this work for us in our day-to-day? As always, we must turn to His Word for the answer. On a side note, isn’t it lovely that we have an “instruction manual” for our lives all laid out before us? Every answer is here! Second Corinthians says, “For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make My dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’ Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.” (6:16; 7:1) So we see that, as always, it comes back to a matter of obedience to His commandments. And again, this is not a way to earn our salvation or get rewards from Christ; instead, it’s an outworking of what has already been completed in our hearts. It’s a “gift” we give to Christ to honor and glorify Him in thanksgiving for our salvation. The idea in these verses is that as God is holy and set apart, so should we be. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have unbelieving friends; it does mean that you can’t willfully sin along with them. It does mean that you are to be light in the darkness to them to lead them to Christ. It means you are “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph. 4: 22-24)
His holiness goes hand in hand with His righteousness, which is another thing that draws me to Him – another thing I’m not that He is, that He can provide.
What is righteousness? What does it mean to be righteous? How does that affect my relationship with Jesus?
The idea of righteousness carries with it the idea of being “morally upright”, just, and sinless; all things that we are not, but Christ is. Listen to this description of God, now that you know what righteousness is: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before You.” (Psalm 89:14) What a beautiful picture of the One we want to have this relationship with!
And yet, there is a problem. Ecclesiastes says, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” (7:20) Romans 3:10 declares, “None is righteous, no, not one.” So how can the unrighteous have anything to do with the Righteous One? Through faith in the resurrecting, saving power of Christ. “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:18-19)
Do you see how our entire relationship with Christ pivots on His work on the cross? How do we respond to this? Romans 6:12-13 answers that question. “Let not sin therefore remain in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” James also gives us instruction. “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” (1:19-22) You see, Christ’s righteousness covering over us demands a response, and again, that response is obedience to and a delight in His Word. How do we defeat sin and follow Him to have a relationship with Him? We don’t have to! Jesus has already defeated sin on the cross. The war has already been won, but we must partake in the battle. That’s why Paul tells us about the armor of God in Ephesians 6. Wouldn’t you fight for an earthly relationship if it were important to you? How much more should we fight for our relationship with Christ?
Conclusion
Do you see how these two attributes, attributes that we gloss over a lot of times to focus on the “feel-good” ones, are so vital to our relationship with Him? They are the very foundation of our relationship with Him! Do His holiness and His righteousness draw you to Him? Do they increase your desire to know Him, to have an intimate knowledge of Christ and to be intimately known by Him? If so, take joy and do the hard work of fighting for that relationship, knowing that it produces good things. “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that He may come and rain righteousness upon you.” If not, spend some time in prayer and determine why that is. Do you not know Him? Do you not desire Him as He is? Have you made your picture of what you want God to be your idol instead of the one true God? Repent, and believe and seek the God who is.
Lord, thank You for being Who You are. Thank you for Your righteousness and Your holiness. Forgive me for not being grateful enough for those qualities. Thank you for the process of sanctification, Lord, where you're making me more and more like You every day. I pray, Lord, that You will open my eyes to the beauty of these qualities and make me appreciate them and You more and more each day. Amen.
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