Sermon Transcript
Well, how many of you were here last week? All right, how many of you were not here? Okay, a couple of us probably not here. So those who are not here, we’re gonna do our best to kind of catch you up. We started a little study in Acts chapter 7 where we’re actually storyboarding our way through the storyline of the Bible.
Now this is something that most people actually can’t do, and that is not the storyboard part, but tell the storyline of the Bible. We know the stories, many stories, but to actually take the whole story and tell that whole story. So often, as is the case, and you can think about your life right now, most people cannot tell the story of the Bible, so actually connect it together. And so we’re in a series because of Acts chapter 7 that we want to help you be able to do that. We want you to know the storyline and we want you to be able to share the storyline with others.
And essentially the big idea of the storyline is simply this. God has relentlessly pursued a relationship with us. He loves us and he wants a relationship with us, but we in response have been on and off again in our relationship with him. From the beginning of time, it’s been an on and off again relationship with him. Have you ever been in an on and off again relationship?
Let me just ask you that. Have you ever been in one of those? He loves me, he loves me not. Kind of relationships. My guess is, is if you can identify one of those, or maybe you’re in one right now, it’s usually miserable.
It’s something that you would like to get out of as soon as possible. I know a couple over in Phoenix, Arizona, where several years ago we were talking about their on-and-off-again story. They met when he was 25, she was 21. Things got off to a great start. It got off to such a good start in their love relationship with each other.
That he asked her to marry him quickly into the relationship. A few months in, asked her to marry him. She said, I got to check with my parents. Her parents said no. So she came back and said, my parents said no, so I can’t marry you.
They said you need to get a job, you need to finish college, you need to get a place to live, and then maybe we’ll consider this. You know, sort of like, yeah, that kind of all makes sense type of thing. And so he didn’t like the answer, so he decided to opt out of the relationship. And for 2 years he went off, he dated other girls and that whole sort of thing. But then they reconnected and they rekindled this excitement for each other, and things kind of progressed along over a series of months until finally he thought to himself, I’m going to ask her to marry me again, and I’m going to do this on her birthday.
So as things were approaching her birthday, she decided that that would be an exciting thing to have him ask her to marry. And so she went to him and said, you know, I was just thinking it would really be great if you gave me a ring, a wedding ring, an engagement ring on my birthday. Well, he didn’t like that. He didn’t want anybody telling him what to do. So he didn’t ask her on his birthday.
He said, I’m blowing this thing off. And a couple weeks went by after the birthday. Evidently he didn’t treat her very very well. But a couple weeks after the birthday, he decided on his own, okay, now I’m ready to ask her. So he went and he asked her, and she said no.
He said, why not? Because of the way you’ve been treating me the last couple of weeks, type of thing, you know. So their love kind of quieted down a little bit for the next 8 months, he told me. And for the next 8 months, they were just friends. You’ve had one of these relationships, we’re just going to be friends now, right?
And so they were friends for about 8 months in that kind of a relationship. But then The love got rekindled again, and this thing just started growing again in this relationship until finally a 3rd time he popped the question. He said, would you marry me? She said, maybe. I’ll tell you in 3 months.
She was going off on a trip to Europe, so she went away to Europe and came back after 3 months. And he said, well? And she said, okay, let’s do this. 8 months later they were married. But here’s the deal.
From the time they met each other to the time that they got married, it was 8 years. 8 years. Would have you hung in there? I couldn’t believe it. 8 years.
You got to be kidding me. On and off again relationship for 8 years. I think I’ll move on and find somebody else. Most of us would probably say. They got married and they’re actually really doing well today.
As I was thinking about that, I was thinking, you know, For many of us, this is kind of typical what happens in our relationship with God. And it could be longer than 8 years where it’s kind of an on and off again relationship with him. Now you got to understand something. If our relationship with God is on and off, it’s not because of God, right? Because his love is steady.
His love is unending. God doesn’t say, I love you, I love you not. God says, I love you, I love you a lot, and my love for you is never-ending. David experienced that. King David, you remember Psalm 23?
Some of you have read Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. That Psalm. Well, in verse 6 of that Psalm, it says, surely goodness and mercy— what? Have followed me all the days of my life. Goodness and mercy is a reflection of love.
So one of the translations translates it this way: Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life. Not a he loves me, he loves me not, but he loves me, he loves me a lot, and he loves me constantly all the time. Nothing David experienced, nothing will ever separate me from the love of God. Now, was David always lovable? You know the story.
Not at all. I mean, he was on and off again in his love for God, and yet God’s love for him was steady. So we’re going to come back to this story today and continue to develop this amazing love that God has for us. And listen, the amazing love that God has for us is the love that he wants from us. He wants us to love him like He loves us.
And so the question we might want to ask ourselves this morning is just very simply this: Do I love God like God loves me? Now, I don’t know where you are in your relationship with God, but just as we look at this account this morning, just ask yourself simply that question. Do you love God as He loves you? Now, how do we define that love? Well, we can look in the Scriptures and just see how the story has unfolded.
So last week we started to unfold this story with 4 storyboards. We first of all talked about creation. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And so we draw an earth here, and it reminds us of beginnings. It reminds us of the beginning of time when God created this world and the universe to share a relationship with man and woman, a love relationship.
But you remember, sin came into that relationship. Sin was the result of deciding to go their own way instead of God’s way. And when sin came into the world, sin separated them from God. Now we’ve got a rift in the relationship, and we remember that through the proverbial apple. We don’t know if it was an apple tree.
The Bible doesn’t actually tell us. It might have been a banana tree. I have no idea. You say, why banana? Because it was so appealing.
It takes a lot of guts. It takes a lot of guts to say that in front of this crowd, but anyway. So we don’t know. We just know that sin came into the world. So what did God do at that point?
Say, well, I’m done with you, you know, is that it? No. God decided that he was going to set in place a plan to ultimately bring man and woman back into relationship with him, and he was going to use a family, the family of Abraham, the descendants of Abraham. So this 3rd storyboard is a picture of a family tree. And in the family tree are found 4 people, the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
And through this family line, God was to grow a people of myriads and myriads of people, multitudes of people called the Jews or the Israeli people, his chosen people. It was going to be through that family that he would ultimately send his Savior, the Messiah. If you’ve ever read the book of Matthew, there’s a genealogy in the book of Matthew, and the genealogy is going to take us all the way up to the time of Christ to show that Jesus is the rightful heir to the throne, that he’s the Messiah. So who does Matthew begin with? Abraham.
He goes all the way back to Abraham. And so Stephen brings into this account Abraham, and after the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, we move to another period in biblical history, the Mosaic period of time. So we picture Moses who’s standing in the middle of the Red Sea, and God has parted the Red Sea as God has used Moses to deliver his people from bondage. They’ve been in bondage in Egypt for 400 years, and so they’ve come through the Red Sea. Now, why would God do that?
Because he loves them and because he wants a forever relationship with them. And so in a way, Moses was a first responder. He was one that God sent to rescue his people and ultimately to give them a law that would tell them how to love God and how to love others. It had in the instructions that he gave some ordinances about even a worship center called a tabernacle. What was a tabernacle?
It was like a portable worship center. You picked it up and you took it with you, and it sat in the middle of God’s people, and it was a constant central reminder of God’s desire to have a relationship with them. So all of this happened during this Mosaic, this Moses period of time. Well, let’s pick up the account then there with Acts chapter 7. Last week we looked at 38 verses.
Guess what? We’re not going to look at that many today. And some of you are saying, Came to the right service. Good. Verse 39, Acts 7:39.
But our fathers— and remember who’s speaking here, this is Stephen, he’s giving them an understanding of God’s work in history. Our fathers refused to obey him— that’s Moses. So now he’s talking to this Jewish group of people about their fathers who refused to obey Moses. Let this just develop. Instead, they rejected him.
And in their hearts they turned back to Egypt. So they’ve been delivered from Egypt, but now they’re thinking about going back to Egypt. They told Aaron, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him. That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf.
They brought sacrifices to it, and they held a celebration in honor of what their hands had made. Now, if you know the account, you know that this is all happening after Moses comes down from Mount Sinai. He’s been up there for a long time, 40 days and nights, and he comes down, and now the people thinking that he’s gone, he’s probably dead, we don’t know where he is, we’re going to go a different direction, we’re going to go back to Egypt. They nominate a new leader, Aaron, and they make for themselves a new god, a god to worship. And they started bringing to this calf, this golden idol, they started bringing sacrifices to it.
They started worshiping a new god instead of, as Stephen talked about in the beginning of this chapter, the God of glory, which essentially is an expression— what?— of loving God with all of their heart? Absolutely not. I mean, they’re out in their relationship with God at this point. But it says, verse 42, but God turned away and He gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies. This is interesting.
See, there comes a point in a relationship when a person turns their back on somebody, the only thing that you can do is to let them go down the road of the choices that they are making. I mean, usually we see, hopefully, that that’s not a good road to go down, but love can’t force a person to love someone else, right? If they were going to love God, they had to make the choice to love God. In fact, if we go back to that storyboard right there, why was there a tree in the garden that God forbid for them to eat from? I think the simple answer to that is because God wanted them to choose to love him.
And had there not been a tree there, the choice would have not been necessary, the choice to choose to love him. And all along, even right now, God gives us the choice. You can choose to love him or not. His desire would be that we would choose to love Him. And in the same way, these people have chosen not to love God but to love a little g god.
And so God turns them over to the worship of other things, to heavenly bodies. God backed off and they went down a whole different road. Stephen says to them, this agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets, did you bring me sacrifices and offerings 40 years in the desert, O house of Israel? The answer to that is no. You’ve lifted up the shrine of Molech.
What’s Molech? The god of wealth. So they started worshiping at the god of wealth, the god of material possessions. And the star of your god Rephaim. What was the Rephaim star?
Well, that was an astrological, you know, kind of worship. So something like what we might do today, astrology. That came to be a part of their makeup in terms of worship. The idols, Stephen says, that you made to worship. So what’s happened here?
They’ve turned away from God and they’ve turned to other objects to worship. Therefore, God said, I will send you into exile beyond Babylon. Now, what is Stephen talking about here? Well, what he is talking about is what happens after the people are delivered from the Egyptians. They go through this body of water, the Egyptians drown, and God provides for them miraculously in a variety of ways.
He gave them breakfast cereal. You remember what that was called? Manna. Yeah, what does manna mean? What is it, right?
So every day they got up and they had, what is it? Again. And after a while they got tired of what is it. So God gave them quail and he gave them water. And so he provided for all of their needs.
He gave them a law. He gave them a tabernacle. So he met their physical needs. He met their spiritual needs. He talked to them about their relational needs and the relationship that they’d have with each other and all of that.
But after all of that, God finally got them to the edge of the Promised Land, and he commanded them to go back into this land of promise, a land of milk and honey. Did they go? Answer: no. They rebelled against God. All they could see were the people that were living in the land.
There were some giants that were living in the land. All they saw were the obstacles. They could not see— listen, they could not see that their God was bigger than the giants that they were going to face. And so they turned away from God, and in their turning away from God, we come to storyboard 5. They end up wandering, wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.
And it is that wandering that Stephen is pointing to now, where the people, because of fear and unbelief, have instead of trusting God, trusted their own ingenuity, if you will, and they spent 40 years in a death march. 40 years in a death march where that entire unbelieving generation dies in the wilderness. Stephen went on to say, our forefathers, verse 44, had the tabernacle of the testimony with them in the desert. So all the way, God’s presence, his symbolic presence, is right there in front of them in the tabernacle. It had been made as God directed Moses.
And if you know anything about the tabernacle, All of these pieces of the tabernacle pointed to God’s work and his glory. And so it had been made according to the pattern that he had seen. Having received the tabernacle, our fathers under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. So what’s Stephen done? Stephen’s gone back and he’s purposed to talk about the tabernacle.
Now, why would he talk about the tabernacle? Because the tabernacle was a very important symbol of God’s desire to have an ongoing relationship with his people. And it’s very possible at this point that part of what he’s trying to say here is, I’m not against God’s work in our midst. If you go back to chapter 6, they have condemned Stephen for being against God, against the tabernacle, against Moses, and against the law. And what he’s saying by this is, I’m not against any of that.
Are you kidding? Not at all. He then jumps to the time of Joshua. So that takes us to a 6th storyboard where Joshua ultimately is the one that brings the tabernacle from that time of wandering into the Promised Land. And so storyboard 6 is going to remind us of the Promised Land.
Where this generation that survives the wandering of 40 years of death, where this generation that survives now comes into this land that their parents refused to take by faith, and they conquer the giants that are living in the land. The wall reminds us of Joshua, of the city— excuse me, of Jericho, the first city that they faced in the conquering or taking back the land. And it was a process that went on for a period of time, but essentially what you have in this Promised Land picture is you have the people just trusting God, loving him, demonstrating their love to him, even making statements like Joshua who said, as for me and my house, we will what? We will serve the Lord. I’m all in on this thing.
Joshua. So Stephen brings into focus this period of Joshua. And then he goes on, verse 45, and he says, it— and here again he’s talking about the tabernacle, which was that thing that was right there in the middle of their— the land— it remained in the land, he says, until the time of David. So what happens now is that Stephen jumps from the Promised Land, the taking back the Promised Land through the leader of Joshua, and he jumps to this period of kings But he leaves this out. So let’s add this in.
What followed the Promised Land period, the coming back into the land— and by the way, that was about a 25-year period where they enjoyed this incredible on relationship with God. They grew close in their love for God. What followed that period was the time of the Judges. And what happened during the period of the Judges? Well, if you talk about an on and off relationship period, this is the one.
This is— and that’s why we picture it with 2 circles here, or 2 arrows that are pointing and moving around the circle together, because this was a cyclical relationship. Sometimes they walked to God, other times they walked away from God. There’s a phrase that’s used a couple times in the book that really essentially summarizes this period of time. It says, everybody did what was right in his own— what? In his own eyes.
Yeah, people were just doing whatever it was that they wanted to do. And every now and then they would turn toward God, and usually they turned toward God when they found themselves in— listen— desperation. Does that sound familiar? And sometimes we turn toward God when we’re in desperate— I can’t get out of this myself. And so they prayed and they asked God to send somebody to get them out of the mess that they were in, and God sent judges.
And so we have this Judges period of time here where there are these judges that rule God’s people for about around 400 years, something like that, where the judges rule God’s people. But even during that time, there was this cyclical on and off, on and off, on and off relationship with God. But ultimately, as Stephen speaks of here, that’s followed by another period of time, the period of kings. David, David was just one king among 42 different kings. And so we’re going to draw a crown here, remind us of the period of kings.
But it wasn’t just David that was a king. Actually, if you read the accounts, you can start in 1 Samuel. You read about the first king. You know who that was? It was Saul.
And then we can read in 2 Samuel and the last part of 1 Samuel about the second king. That was David. And David, for the most part, was on in his relationship with God. And then we could read about in 1 Kings the 3rd king. Who was that?
We’re not talking to each other this morning. Okay, so the 3rd king was Solomon. Yeah, so you got Saul, and then you got David, and then you got Solomon. And then you have 39 kings that follow these 3 kings. And these 39 kings, when it comes to a relationship with God, were mostly off in their relationship with God.
Of the 39 kings, there are only 8 kings where you read the account found in 1 Kings and also 2 Kings— there were only 8 kings where it would say, and so-and-so, like Josiah, and Josiah was a good king. Most of the kings, when you read this account, say, and so-and-so was an evil king. So of the 42 kings, essentially what you have are 10 kings total that loved God and served him. But listen, but they did not serve him perfectly, but nonetheless they loved him. And I think that’s such a good reminder to us.
42 kings, most of them walking away from God, the people mostly walking away from God, And what God does here during this period is he sends— and you see the little prophetic megaphone that’s there? All right, the prophetic megaphone reminds us— you’ve wondered when you’ve looked at the Old Testament scriptures, where do the prophets fit in? And most of us have no clue, and that’s why the pages of our scripture are still stuck together in the prophet section of our Bible, the last 17 books of the Old Testament. We don’t have a clue. Well, actually, this is where they begin to fit in.
There were 12 prophets that God sent during this period of kings to call the people to love him. Over and over they repeatedly called the people to love him. In fact, you can see this begin to develop here in verse 46. He goes on and he says, who— speaking about David— enjoyed God’s favor, and he asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. So David, in his love for God, thought, you know, we just got to build God a permanent house.
We got to build him something more than this tabernacle. So he asked God that God would let him build him a temple. But it was Solomon, Stephen says, who built the house for him. But as wonderful as that house was, read on, however— and whenever you get a however, you got to pay attention— however, the Most High, speaking about God, does not live in houses. Made by men.
As the prophet says, heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all of these things? So what’s he saying? I’m, I’m bigger than a house.
You can’t box me into a house. You see, he’s speaking to a crowd of people who have fixated on a building instead of focused on a relationship. Let me say it a different way. They fixated on the religion instead of focused on a relationship. And Stephen wants them to come to understand what we’re talking about here is not something that’s limited to a building, that’s confined to a building.
We’re talking about something that can completely change your life wherever you are. He brings into play there the prophets. Over and over again, these prophets came and they spoke to God’s people about this relationship. But what was their response? Essentially the same response that’s found here.
Look at verse 51. You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears, you’re just like your fathers. You always— and you know, we’re told never use the word always, right? Well, look at this. You always resist the Holy Spirit.
Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. Now what’s he saying? He’s talking about this very period of time. He’s talking about this king’s period of time when God sent 12 prophets, one after another, calling the people back into a relationship with him and away from evil.
Back into a relationship with them. Did they hear the message? No, they’re just like this group of people Stephen’s talking to right now. They’re stiff-necked. They resisted.
Their hearts were hard. In fact, they were so hard that it says that they even killed— they even killed the prophets that God sent to invite them into this relationship. So Jeremiah, he was stoned to death. And Isaiah was cut in half. Why?
Because he brought a message of God wants a relationship with you and a promise too, a promise about a coming righteousness that is a son will be born to us and the government will be upon his shoulders and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Why did he talk about that? Because there is a promised Messiah that was going to come and this promised Messiah would make it possible for us to have a relationship with God, a relationship that God wants with us now. And forever. But did they hear it?
No. So ultimately what happened? Well, what it says in verse 43, going back, God sent them into exile. And so this picture right here is a picture of the consequences of the people’s rejection of God’s desire to have a relationship with him. So we draw a sad face here.
And this sad face reminds us that ultimately God’s people are judged. They experience the consequences for their sinful desire to live life completely apart from God. And as it says in verse 43, they end up over in Babylon. They end up in exile in Babylon. And this period over here lasts for about 70 years.
But even during that time where they’re experiencing the consequences for their choices not to be in connection with God, Even during that period of time, God sent a couple more prophets. So you see the prophetic megaphone there. And those 2 prophets were Ezekiel and Daniel. And if you know anything about those prophets, you know that what they wanted the people to hear was this: there’s a future for you. God’s not done with you yet.
He still wants a relationship with you. One of those prophets, one of the prophets that spoke about this relationship, not here but back over here, was Jeremiah. Jeremiah was called the weeping prophet. And so I think about this picture through the eyes of Jeremiah and how he’s weeping. In fact, he wrote a book called Lamentations, which is 5 funeral dirges where he’s weeping.
He’s weeping over God’s fallen people who’ve now ended up in exile. But while they’re in exile, for instance, one of the 2 that prophesied was Ezekiel. And some of you know that Ezekiel had a message. It was a message about how there’s this valley and it has all these bones that are scattered across this valley, and these bones are dry bones. And these bones someday, they’re going to come back together and they’re going to form again a body.
And on this body will come flesh, and then the spirit will come back into this body, and they will live again. And this prophecy that’s found in Ezekiel chapter 37 was meant for God’s people to know there is a day where you’re going to come back to life again, and we’re going to try it again to get this thing right. Why? Because I want a relationship with you. And just said through the words of Jeremiah, because the Lord’s loving kindnesses indeed never cease, his compassions never fail, they are new every morning.
Lamentations 3:22-23. I mean, why would God bother? Listen, why would God bother to say that to his people? Why? Why would he say that to us today?
Because he loves us and his love is unending. Jeremiah said it. God’s love never ends. Never. He loves us and he wants a relationship with us and he has relentlessly pursued that relationship.
So much so, this final period we mentioned this morning is over here, the return. And so we draw a return arrow, but we also have a prophetic megaphone there as well, because what we know now is that after the people experienced the consequences for their sin away from their homeland in Babylon, Persia ultimately became the world power and permitted the Jews to return. And so they came back to their homeland. They came back to that place that God wanted them to be in. And even in coming back, God continued to remind them of his love.
And so he sent 3 more prophets: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the last 3 books of the Old Testament. Haggai spoke about the problem of priorities, how oftentimes our priorities get messed up and God gets second place or even worse. And Zechariah spoke about the coming Messiah and how the Messiah gives us great incentive for having a strong relationship with God. There’s hope coming in the future. And then finally, Malachi spoke about the problem of religion, that the people at that time, their relationship turned to a religion.
And he says, don’t let that happen. Don’t harden your heart toward God. Draw back toward him. Don’t harden your heart toward him. Now let’s stop and just think just for a minute.
Why did Stephen bring this up? Because he wanted to see his fellow Israelites love God as, as God loved them. Why has this happened over and over again in the scriptures? Because God doesn’t want an on-and-off-again relationship with us. He wants us to experience his love in ways that transform us so that we are constantly on in this relationship with him.
You know, I, I can’t be sure about this, but I wouldn’t be surprised when we get to heaven if God doesn’t ask us a question. And the question is along these lines: did you get it? Did you get it? Did you get it that I love you? Did you get that, that I love you and that I want a relationship with you?
You see, what’s the purpose of life? It’s to love God and it’s to live with God now and forever. That’s the purpose of life. The problem is that oftentimes, and it even happened back in the garden, the problem is, is that the created replaces the Creator. That’s the problem.
And all this wonderful stuff that God has given us to create, and it’s wonderful, He’s given us the ability to create. He’s given us the resources to create. He has given us the desire to enjoy creation. I mean, God did not have to give Adam and Eve a desire for the fruit, but he did. And he gave them this wonderful, luscious, beautiful fruit in this beautiful garden to enjoy, but they went wrong when the created replace the Creator.
And we go wrong when the created replaces the Creator. And one of the dangers that we face in Silicon Valley is that we’re all about creating things, aren’t we? It’s wonderful. There’s nothing wrong with that. But when the created supersedes the Creator, that’s when our love diminishes.
And that’s when things go wrong.
And so I just kind of wonder this morning, are we loving God like God loves us? Are we all in on this? You can ask yourself, first of all, have you met him? Have you met God? God wants a relationship with you.
He really does.
He wants a relationship with you. Think of it like a relationship with anybody else. There has to be some kind of a meeting. You’ve got to meet one another. And God has made it possible for you to meet him through what is announced in the Scriptures, but especially through the Anointed One, the Righteous One, Jesus Christ.
He’s made it possible for every one of us through Jesus Christ to be in a permanent ongoing relationship with him. He wants to adopt us into his family. There has to be a meeting. There has to be a coming to God, a willingness to say to God, I’m in. I’m not going to be in and out with you.
I’m not going to have a love you, I don’t love you, I love you, I don’t love you relationship. I want to be in. And if you’ve met him, are you following— falling in love with him more and more? And more as the days go by so that your love for God is growing. It’s not diminishing.
Is your love for God growing? If it’s not growing, is it possible again that the creation has superseded the Creator? Is it possible? Is your love for him growing? I mean, is there even any time for God?
We could spend so much time on an iPhone or whatever it is. We could spend so much time on that that we don’t have time to spend with God, that we don’t have time to read his scriptures because we’re so busy checking everything else. And before we know it, an hour or 2 has gone by. And in terms of having spent an hour or 2 with God, are you kidding? The created replaced the Creator.
It’s not to say there’s not a place for that, but you’ve got to ask yourself at some point, if you don’t think about God throughout the entire day, something’s wrong. You see, what I think he’s describing is what a genuine love relationship is like. And what’s a genuine love relationship like? It’s, it’s when you fall in love with somebody and you really love them. Guess what begins to happen?
You start thinking about them and you want to spend time with them, don’t you? You get up in the morning, one of the first things on your mind is this person that you love, and they’re on your mind throughout the day, and they’re on your mind in the evening, and you just can’t get by without having them on your mind. Why? Because you share love together. And God wants the same thing for us.
Isn’t that true? Say, how do I know that? Here, it’s right here. So the question for the morning is, is do I love God like he loves me? Me.
Do I want to love God like he loves me? Am I going to be perfect in this love? Answer? What’s the answer to that? No.
Are you perfect in any love? No, we’re not perfect in any love. But it’s not a matter of the perfection. Listen, it’s not a matter of perfection in love— loving God. It’s a matter of the direction.
Is the direction of my life in growing to love God more and more as God loves me. All in loving him a lot.
You got it? I hope so. Can you explain this to somebody? I think you can. I had a fabulous experience this week.
I didn’t anticipate it happening, but I sat down at lunch with one of my Muslim friends who’s thinking through faith matters, and I pulled out the phone and I went to the app. Last week we announced that you could get Bible Storyboards right now on the App Store for free. I’m sorry we don’t have the Android yet, but if you want to build it for us, come and talk to me afterwards.
And so I turned it on and I spent— seriously, we spent 55 minutes talking about that one, that one, And that one. And after 55 minutes, I brought this one up on the screen and I said, who’s that? He said, that’s Moses. I said, what do you know about Moses? He mentioned a couple things.
I said, what would you think if we got together once a month and we learned together the story of the Bible? Would you be interested in that? He said, I’d absolutely love to learn about the Bible. You see, what we’re trying to do is something that most Christians can’t do. We’re trying to, first of all, understand this story.
We’re trying to, to pull together the stories of the Bible into a story that we could share with others through 15 simple pictures. And my hope for you isn’t that you’ll just come and you’ll hear this on Sunday mornings for one more week. And then, you know, say, at least that’s over, but that you will be able to share this story. I think that’s the ultimate objective, isn’t this? To be able to help others know there is a God who loves them, and this God has been relentlessly pursuing a relationship with them.
Are you interested? I mean, come on, people, if you can think of somebody else that can give you a better relationship with God, buy it. It’s not there. Let’s thank him. Lord, thanks for speaking to us again today and for helping us as we look at the book of Acts, be able to study it in a fresh way so that we can grasp what is here and hopefully learn from it and be changed by it and help others learn and be changed by what it is that we are learning together.
And today, Lord, help us know from the bottom of our hearts that you do love us. May we not walk out on you. May we not turn our back on you. But may we embrace this love and be changed by this love. And may this bring the created into its proper place in our lives so that it does not supersede you.
But that you are prominent and you are our passion and you are our ultimate priority. And we are changed by that love. Help us help others understand and know that love as well. And just before we say amen this morning, maybe in your heart you’ve never met God through Jesus Christ and you are ready to do that this morning. This has finally made sense to you.
You. I just invite you right now, just in the quietness of your heart, to tell God that, Lord, I want to— I want a love relationship with you from this day on. I want to love you, and I want to live with you now and forever. And so I ask you through Jesus to forgive me of my sins. I believe he’s the Savior.
I believe you sent him in the world to give his life and for people like me, and I would ask that you would adopt me into your family and change me. I want to follow your leadership. I want to live according to your desires. I want to learn more about you. I want to fall in love with you in ways that will transform me from the inside out.
You know, God hears prayers like that, and I trust that if you’ve never received Jesus, even this morning you will, or you just did. And if you do, or you need to talk to somebody about him, come and speak to one of us after the service that we could be a help to you. But let somebody know what God’s done in your heart today. We thank you, Lord, in Jesus’ name. And everybody said amen.
Well, we’ll get our team back up and, uh, come together again over song and worship the Lord. Hey, let me just say, as I said last week, we’ve got some resources over there on that table, and we want to invite you to, to pick up some of those resources. So if you’re, if you’re a parent and you got some children that are young, you want to do some family nights together, there’s a 3-week family night over there that you can have. There’s a grid over there that summarizes all 15 storyboards. It’ll give you the 15 simple storyboards so you can draw them.
And the hope would be that you can actually learn to draw them if you practice this morning. You’re already down the road on this, right? So you’re in good shape. But anyway, so there are a couple resources like that over there. You could see some of the other resources that are there that you could use a group study.
I hope that you’re going to the website biblestoryboards.com because we’re trying to just give you a little bit more information there. So last week we made 5 posts there. There will be 6 posts this week, Lord willing. And what that’ll do is follow through on what we just talked about this morning. So the 6 storyboards this morning will be posted about all week long starting tomorrow, and kind of like a daily devotional helping you work through that.
So that’s all there for you. As I already said, the app is available this month for free. So if you’d like to take advantage of that and you have an Apple product of some kind, make sure to download that and enjoy that and use that. And other things are there for you, but we want to just do what we can to enjoy this time and grasp and get the most out of it. Okay, amen.
