Connected - Foundation: Your Relationship with God - February 2, 2025

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

I have a public service announcement this morning.

Gentlemen 12 days left until valentine's day

that means you have 12 days left

to shop maybe less time to get a reservation somewhere

but i do believe valentine's day is on a friday so friday night date night valentine's

day february 14th i'm saying this for my benefit too the more i say it the more

i will remember it so it's it is self-serving i apologize kind of.

When we think about february it's it is the time of love i mean they had stuff

in stores like before new year's for valentine's day did you see that wow the

marketing is just over the top,

but it's also a chance not just being we think about valentine's day we think

about love and we think about relationships but it really is a time where i

think each and every one of us should kind of think about our own relationships.

Now, not just that of our relationship with our significant other,

but I think also we need to start at the source and really think about our relationship

first and foremost, our relationship with God.

And where are we at in that relationship?

You know, when we think about February, a lot of people get married.

New Year's Eve into the new year, that's a big day when people schedule weddings.

We have a lot of weddings that will probably happen on Valentine's Day.

And, you know, it's just this time where love is all in our minds.

Well, when we think about love, I want to bring over the next several weeks.

Just a series about relationships, just called Connected.

And when we think about relationships, it's not just something that happens,

but it's something that has to be built on.

It's something that has to take some effort if you're going to be in relationship with somebody else.

And the true thing about that is it goes for God, too.

And I think, really, we think about it, all of our relationships have to start

with that first and foremost, that primary relationship of us and our Creator, of us and God.

If we try to create any relationships outside of that, usually,

especially in my own experience, they kind of blow up in your face,

or they don't end up being what you expected them to be.

And so this morning, I just want to encourage you from the gospel of Matthew

Matthew 22:36–40

chapter 22, verses 36 through 40.

And so hear the word the Lord this morning. I do invite you to stand if you're able to or willing to.

Let's honor the word of the Lord together.

Matthew 22, 36. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

Jesus replied, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.

Let's pray. Father, open our hearts to the word that we just heard,

the word that we just read together.

Lord, the word that is echoing in our minds about your love for us and our love for you.

And Father, how that should go about exuding through all of the relationships that we have.

God, speak to our hearts today, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

I think if you're going to build anything, and I'm not really a builder.

I built a few things in my life, nothing I would want to show you probably,

especially with some professional builders in the audience today in the congregation.

But I was proud they lasted. You know, anytime you want to build something,

especially a structure, you want to make sure you can have a good foundation, right?

Isn't that what builders say, but also the scripture says that.

You're not going to build your foundation on a sand, a foundation of sand.

You're going to have it on something solid, something rock solid.

And I think that's true for relationships.

We're going to need a bedrock to build all of our other relationships in life off of.

And that bedrock of a relationship has to be with God.

I'm not going to compromise on this because I know this is the truth.

And as we look to Scripture today, we see even from the words of Jesus that

he's saying this is the truth, that the measure of our relationships,

which all of our relationships revolve around love in some form or some fashion,

we need to make sure it's solid.

And I think still fresh in the new year, as we're pushing forward,

we need to make sure that everything else is on this solid foundation.

A relationship with your spouse needs to be built upon the rock.

A relationship with your children needs to be built upon the rock.

Your family members, extend that out.

The people in your community, the people you have business dealings with,

or the people that you have fun with in recreation.

We need to build these relationships on the rock that is God,

on the rock that is our love for God, recognizing that He first loves us.

And so I just want to give you three points this morning on the foundation of

relationships that we see here in Matthew chapter 22.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

As we look back to the scripture, we see a question that came up.

All these people were questioning Jesus, some trying to trap him in some theological

arguments and some legal arguments.

Others just trying to really sincerely say, I believe you're Jesus,

you're the son of God, so you're the Messiah, so tell me about this.

You can kind of discern for yourself as you go through the New Testament,

especially in Jesus, the last week, before he was crucified.

Kind of discern which is which.

But here this lawyer, this scribe, this Pharisee asks, what's the greatest commandment?

And Jesus just simply replies, love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, with all your mind.

Over in another gospel in Mark, I do believe it says to love God with all your

strength, just kind of completing that, the wholeness of who you are.

So we see first the foundation of all of our relationships has to be that what

Jesus said first, what God said

first, and echoing all the way back to Deuteronomy, what we are to do.

See, we've got to love the Lord, our God, first and foremost.

If you're wondering, why are my relationships sticking?

Why do I keep having trouble and I can't ever have a relationship with anybody?

Well, it might be the other person, but if you've had a lot of those,

maybe it's you and you need to look in the mirror. I'm not being mean,

and please don't take it as that.

But we need to check ourself maybe.

If we're riding in a car and boy, something stinks, and we've asked everyone

else in the car if they put on deodorant,

and they've got their shoes on and we come to ourself, we have to think,

maybe we should have done it first. Am I wearing deodorant today?

I mean, it's a silly illustration, but when we think about our relationships

and them going wrong all the time, have we built them upon first a love for

God that we have experienced.

All of your other relationships are going to fail and sometimes fail miserably

if we don't first build it on the foundation of that.

You see, we've got to understand that love comes from God, the ability to love.

Not just that He created us with that innately, but also that God expressed His love to us.

In 1 John 4, 7, Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God,

and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

God is the originator of that. And my son's favorite verse in the whole Bible,

thanks to a VBS, is 1 John 4.19.

We love because he first loved us. God is the source.

God is the originator of the kind of love that we're talking about this morning.

That highest level of love that will be good for all other relationships that you have.

First of all, that love comes from God. is something we've got to take to the bank.

It's a truth we can't deny. It's a truth that we have to trust.

Now, the obvious question is, okay, well, what kind of love are you talking about?

Well, I'm talking about a love that is active and a love that is within your

living experience. And I'm talking about the highest level of love out there.

You know, the ancient Greeks, there was at least four different kinds of love.

And the first one was the easy one. It's the Greek word for that is eros.

Okay, that's kind of a root word for some other words I won't mention this morning,

but you can kind of discern that. It's the passionate kind of love.

It's that kind of love that God created, that healthy, sensual love between

a husband and wife wherein it was supposed to be expressed there.

But it's that love in that relationship. It's the passionate love.

It's the romantic love. It's the physical attraction that plays all a part in this.

God gave us this kind of desire so that we would use that in the marriage relationship

to experience the oneness that can be in marriage, not just physically,

but I'm talking emotionally, spiritually, all the way around.

It's so important to God that in 1 Corinthians 6, through the apostle Paul,

gives this warning, flee sexual immorality. Well, what is that?

Sexual immorality is taking arrows to an extreme where it wasn't meant to be,

outside of the banks of the confines of where it was supposed to be practiced.

Paul says to flee from that.

All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually

sins against their own body.

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you,

whom you have received from God.

You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore,

honor God with your bodies.

So Eros is one of the ways that we experience love, that we give and receive

love, but it's meant for a specific reason, a specific purpose.

It goes all the way back to Genesis when God told Adam and Eve,

be fruitful and multiply.

It's nothing naughty. You don't have to be ashamed of it as long as It's within

the confines with which God said, hey, this is good.

All right. You got Eros, right? That's not the kind of love I'm talking about

this morning. Am I red? Because I feel I'm very red this morning.

You guys weren't going to say nothing, were you?

Doesn't take much, I'll tell you that. All right. The next kind of love is storge.

It's the kind of familial love, the kind of love that exists between family members.

This store gate, it talks about the kind of love that you have with your homies

when you're just hanging out.

It's the kind of love that when they really feel like they're family,

it's the kind of love in your families that perhaps your in-laws,

your son-in-law, your daughter-in-law begins to feel like they're part of the family.

It kind of goes back to the verse in Exodus 20. Honor your father and your mother

so that you may live long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

It's this kind of love of honor, this kind of love of respect.

It's the kind of love that you're part of my family and I love you.

Hey, storge is a good love. Storge is an important love.

Storge is a vital love that we express between one another.

But it's not the kind of love that Jesus was talking about here,

that God was talking about.

The next kind of love you've heard about before, because we have a city in our

nation that A team, unfortunately, is going to Super Bowl from this city.

I'm sorry, did I really say that? I did.

I apologize to those of you that like the Philadelphia Eagles. I'll stop there.

Phileo is the kind of love, not phileo fish, but phileo, Philadelphia,

it's this endearing love.

Of course, Philadelphia is called the city of brotherly love.

And so it's that kind of love, a relationship between people,

one of warmth with one another.

So you actually like hanging out with them, you like being with them.

It's kind of broader in a sense that phileo or the brotherly love can extend

to churches. like we pray each week for a sister church.

We have love for them because they're part of the body of Christ.

We pray for our brothers and sisters throughout the world. It's this brotherly love.

Romans 12, 10 says, be devoted to one another in love.

Honor one another above yourselves. This is the kind of love that's good. It's good to receive.

It's good to express, but it's not the kind of love that was being expressed

here when we're instructed to love the Lord our God with all our heart,

soul, mind, and strength.

You see, the kind of love we're talking about is this kind of love called agape.

Agape love. Now, a little kid in a Sunday school class, they were talking about

this and the kid went home and mom and dad said, hey, what'd you learn in Sunday school today?

Mommy and daddy, we learned about guppy love.

Guppy love? Yeah, can I have a fish?

No, no, no. Sometimes we might get it confused, but agape love is the highest,

the most complete form of affection

that you can possess. It's the kind of love that God imparts to us.

It's the kind of love that is foundational to every other love that we might

have because it's this agape love that is the strong, selfless,

and sacrificial love that will love you no matter what you look like,

no matter how wrong you've done someone,

that will love you when everyone else won't.

That's the kind of love that God loves us with. So many different illustrations

in the Bible, so many stories in the Bible that illustrate this agape love,

the highest, purest form of love,

the kind of love that builds you up, the kind of love that after you've been

someone experience this agape love when someone sacrificed for you,

that you can't help but show that same grace and mercy to others as well.

It's this agape love that Jesus was talking about, to love the Lord your God

with that selfless, sacrificial love.

Why? Because he first showed us how to do that.

Jesus showed you that love. While you were dead in your trespasses and sins, separated from God.

Jesus died on the cross for you. He died on the cross to take your punishment

for that sin that you were committing, for the sin of action or inaction,

for that original sin that all human beings are born with.

Jesus died on the cross to take all of that away.

He died for your sin. It's by the shedding of his blood that our sins are taken away or blotted out.

Jesus didn't have to do that. Jesus didn't have to leave all that he had in

heaven together with the Father and the Spirit to come to earth to be born as

a vulnerable baby to a young woman,

and then to grow up and go through everything we go through growing up.

Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not so good. But to live that life,

to grow up even without that sin, to become a man and then to die on a cross

willingly for my sin, for your sin.

That's the agape kind of love. That's the kind of love that God showed us that we should have.

And when we think about it, that love is the hallmark, not a movie,

but a foundational cornerstone that all the rest of our loves that we experience

should be expressed within.

We have a personal relationship. You can't help but have that agape love.

I think when I was married and then began having children, I really saw this

agape love displayed in my wife, especially with our first son. You're a brand new dad.

All right, I got a kid. Oh yeah, I got a son. All right, this is great.

And then three o'clock in the morning, you hear this wail coming from somewhere,

this cry, and it shakes you to your core before you can even open your eyes.

Mom is up and she's already in there feeding the baby or changing the baby's diaper.

I mean, it's that selfless kind of love, that agape love, that's really displayed.

I know that's kind of store-gay love as well, but it goes more,

she didn't hit me yet until I think the third child to get up and go feed or

get up and go change the diaper.

But we think about this kind of love, it's the love that, boy,

it's foundational to every other relationship that we have.

Well, we're to love the Lord, our God.

And it goes on to say, with all your heart, soul, mind, of course,

Mark says strength, we're to love God with all of our being.

You know, in the church, especially maybe growing up, I don't know if you got

into this trap where you kind of try to segment your life.

Okay, this is how I am when I'm at school. This is how I am when I'm at home.

And of course, this is how I am when I'm at church.

I mean, we tried to segment things and we didn't want the two to intertwine

because then it got really weird.

And who we are at school didn't match up maybe to who we are at home or who

we were at church and we get in trouble when our life is fragmented like that.

Jesus says, I don't want you to love me with just your fragmentation, just your church self.

I want you to love me with all that you are, with your whole being.

And so he goes through a list here. He says, with all of your heart.

When we think about the heart, it's the seat of our affections and will.

It's that devotion part. I mean, why at Valentine's Day do we give someone,

you know, this beautiful red heart or pink heart?

Why do we give those little sweetheart candies out at Valentine's Day?

Because it's an affection.

It's something that we show that we love you by giving you candy, by giving you flowers.

We think about what it means to love one another with our heart.

Jesus said it this way, For where your treasure is, in Matthew 6,

21, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

He didn't mean the physical organ within your chest, but he meant the seat of

your emotions, the seat of your affections, the seat of your will and your devotion.

This morning, are you loving God with all of your emotion, with all of your

affection, with all of your devotion and will?

That's what God wants from you, to love him with all of that.

He said, to love me with all or to love him with all of our soul.

We think about what a soul is. You know, we kind of get confused soul and spirits,

and you know, it's just kind of intangible.

But we think about it this way, that the soul is the seat of our breath and

our eternal consciousness, right?

It is that part of us that's the essence of our being.

Genesis puts it this way in Genesis 2-7, the Lord God formed man out of the

dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,

and the man became a living being.

I mean, without the soul, without God's action in breathing into us the breath

of life, giving us our soul, we'd just be a pile of dirt.

As a matter of fact, what happens to us when we die? When the soul leaves our

bodies, we become that pile of dirt again.

It's not a pleasant thought this morning, but God wants us to love him with

all of our soul, that eternal consciousness.

All of you that knows when you're active and alive, that knows what you're doing,

your eternal self, that soul, you know down deep who you are,

who you really are, even when no one else might, except for God.

God wants you to love him with your eternal self.

Not just coming to church on a Sunday morning to please a friend,

but coming because that's the desire of your soul, of your eternal self,

is to be in the presence of God with other people.

Well, it goes on to say, love the Lord your God with all of your mind.

We think about the mind, it's the seat of your intellect, the seat of your thought,

your reasoning, and your understanding.

It's not just the emotional part that we talked about when we say about loving

God with all of our heart, but it's loving God with all of our mind as well,

all of our thought processes, our reasoning processes, our intellect.

So important that Paul told the church in Rome and tells us today in Romans

Romans 12 · chapter mention

chapter 12, that something needs to happen with our mind.

We need to have it really submitted and totally surrendered to God.

In Romans 12 too, Paul says, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this

world, but be transformed by doing a bunch of religious acts,

by come to church every Sunday, by giving your 10%, by inviting others.

No, that's not what the scripture says, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is,

his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

Boy, have you set your mind on godly things?

Have you let God just so transform your mind that you're thinking thoughts that

he would think, that your imagination is just going wild with all of these godly

things, ways to help others, ways to serve others.

Ways to just live as God wants you to live. Of course, Mark says,

love God with all your strength. It's not in our text this morning,

but just to say a little bit about it.

You know, everything we do with our bodies, everything we do with our work, with everything,

all of our strength, anything that takes strength, God wants us to do it for

his glory, to do it as if we were working for the Lord, as the scripture says,

not just to do a halfway job and say, okay, God, that's all I got the energy

for today. I'm gonna go watch Netflix or something.

No, to do the best job that we can do.

Yeah, we might be doing it for a boss, but really we're doing it for God because

our work testifies to who we are.

Our work and our jobs that we do testify to who comes first in our life.

Is it God or is it just, I got to do this crummy job, man?

You know, I'm tired of changing diapers and wiping up spills.

No, that's not you guys, right?

I'm tired of doing this every day. Why? So I can just go home and be so tired

I got to come back the next day.

No, we do our best because we're working really for God and ultimately for God.

When we think about all these things, God wants us to love him and to love him with all of our being.

And as the scripture says, this is the first and the greatest commandment.

The second is like the first, to love your neighbor as yourself,

well, this is our main duty, to love God and to love others.

If you can only do one thing for the Lord, that's what he wants you to do.

Love him with all that you are and love others. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Hey, that extends to your kids, right?

First and foremost, I think extends to your immediate family,

but we can't just stop it there within our own household. It radiates out from there.

Maintaining a personal relationship with God is key to maintaining your other relationships.

I know this from personal experience. If I'm not maintaining my relationship

with God, me and my wife are going to get in all kinds of fights.

Why do I say that? Well, because I'm acting selfishly. She will tell me that.

Maybe. She doesn't have to tell me because I know. Because when I'm not right

with God, when I'm not in line, and when I'm out of alignment,

it's like a car that's not in alignment.

And you're cruising down the road and it wants to drift this way.

Or you straighten it up and you cruise down the road and maybe your alignment's going this way.

When we're not in alignment with God, when our relationship is not right with God, we tend to drift.

We tend to go one way or the other way. And we don't stay on course where God wants us to be.

And we begin to think about our relationships in selfish ways.

What's in it for me? What could I do in this relationship to get more for me?

It just kind of blows it all out of the water. You see, God wants us to think

of him first, but not neglect the other relationships. But he's got to come first.

We think about what loving one another means. When we think about what loving

God and other means, there's four things here really quickly.

First of all, relationships take commitment and loyalty.

When we're involved in a relationship with God, He wants us to be committed to Him.

The Scripture calls God a jealous God. Now, usually we think,

wow, jealousy, that's not a good thing.

But when it's this pure kind of love, it's a different story.

When it's this agape love, God loves you with this love that will not tolerate

anyone else being number one in your life.

God wants your commitment to Him, first and foremost.

God wants you to be loyal to Him.

Just like in a marriage relationship, man, I don't want anyone else flirting with my wife.

Man, that's not good. That makes me angry.

That makes me want to release some righteous indignation upon somebody else.

We think about loyalty what god wants and that commitment in the marriage relationship

he's the one that started it he wants us to be committed and loyal to him not

flirting around with other,

spiritualities other religions other witchcraft kind of stuff no we stick to

our relationship with god it's revealed from the scripture on how to have this

relationship and love god and live in God.

We love others first by loving God. It takes trust and it takes respect.

It's hard to be in a relationship where you're not respected.

Maybe you've experienced that, and I'm sorry if you have.

Or maybe you know of others that you've helped or that you've been with that

have experienced that, where they're said that they're supposed to be loved there, but there's not.

And in our own relationship with God, it's a relationship based on faith.

We've got to trust that God is with us. We've got to trust that what God says

is true. And I think when we trust, when we exercise faith, then the evidence

of that faith comes after that.

But first and foremost, God wants you to trust him.

Hey, when you're going through some bad stuff, God wants you to trust him.

When you're celebrating on the mountaintop, God wants you to trust him.

In all things, we are to trust God, but that respect has to be there as well.

I was driving somewhere this week. I may have been coming here to the church,

and on the radio, they were talking about how little respect is taught these

days, whether it's in our educational institutions.

I'm not slamming any teachers or educators this morning, but they were just

talking in generalities, and you never want to do that.

But I got to thinking about after hearing that report,

and a lot of the reasons it's not really taught is because it hasn't been caught,

whether it's not been modeled at home or it hasn't been modeled in families

or in sports teams or in educational institutions.

And so without seeing the model, we have a generation of young people that don't

know how to show respect to one another.

I mentioned this morning we had some young people, some young men opening the

doors for others to go in and to go out.

And then when the children's church time came for their peers to go and to go to Sunday school.

You know, that respect issue, boy, it's so vital.

That respect issue, that we're going to respect God, the boundaries that God

puts into place, that we're going to trust God no matter what happens,

that God, we still revere you.

We still hold you in high esteem because you're God.

I know a lot of times we're tempted to turn our backs toward God when something goes wayward.

Well, God, my team's not in the Super Bowl. Thanks a lot.

I know they changed their name and everything, but I'll just turn my back on you, God, for a while.

I mean, we do stuff like that, and we don't respect God when circumstances don't

fall into place that we want.

Instead of looking and saying, okay, God, what did you want to happen here?

What did you want, or what do you want in my life? I'm going to respect that.

Whatever happens to me, God, I know you're not going to leave me.

You're committed to me. God, you're loyal to me.

I'm going to trust you. and because I'm going to trust you, I'm going to show you respect.

I'm not going to question you all the time, but I'm, yeah, I have the question

why, but I want to see what you're doing.

In our relationships, we still need that love, that respect, that trust.

We're going on in our main duty to love God and to love others.

Two more things that are involved in relationships, giving and surrendering of oneself.

You give of your time. You surrender of your conveniences sometimes,

to meet the needs of a friend, to meet the needs of a stranger that's in need,

and that God has said, hey, help them out.

When it comes to God, God wants us to give him all of ourself,

not to hold any part back, but all of us, all of who we are needs to be going to God.

And last but not least, our main duty, God wants to know us,

and he wants to share with us, so that we can know others and so that we can share with others.

Boy, this isn't like Dr. Phil or anything, but these are some pretty good relational

tips for us to check, right?

We think about what this means today, and I'll wrap this up because we're going

to take some time to celebrate the Lord's Supper together.

When we prioritize our connection with God, it creates the solid base from which

every other relationship we have can grow and can flourish and can prosper.

But the priority has to be, first of all and foremost, God.

God is number one. Every other relationship will be influenced by the primary

relationship you have with Jesus.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast.

You can find a copy of today's sermon, as well as other sermons,

and the sermon outlined from today on our church's website, www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.