Love One Another: Love to listen ... and be loved

Matthew 17:1-9

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

4 Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”

6 When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, “Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.

Listening guide

Basic ways to practice good listening ...

Good listening ______ ____ ______ other people. 

Great listening __________ us and them. 

“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,” (Is 53:4) 

“Carry each other’s burdens” (Gal 6:2)

Love to listen … and be loved.   

Discussion questions

Sermon

Here are some basic ways to practice good listening.  

“Are we okay?” 

I put away my phone, stop the video game, or turn off the TV when people want to talk to me. I give them my attention.  

I don’t get defensive or judgmental.  

“I thought you said …. Is that what you mean?” Or “I missed something in what you said...let’s try again.” Can I clarify?  

“Tell me more” “Do you want to tell me anything else?” 

“What I’m hearing you say is” or “What would you like me to remember from this conversation?” 

All these and more are part of good listening. What about you? What do you add as good ways to practice listening? 

One I left off is attunement. It’s matching your nonverbal body signals to those of the other person.  

I'm not even going to ask how you and I are at listening. I don’t want to make us anxious.  

Michael E experience – do you want to tell me more  

“you changed my life”  

Become good (or at least better) listeners 

Listening is the first way to show people we care. This is another place where the Bible and good common sense and research all say basically the same thing.  

Stephen Covey said, Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. Ernest Hemingway said “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” I always think that scene from the old Robin Hood is pretty funny. The castle is burning down. The snake and Prince John watch it burn. “I knew it. I knew it. I just knew this would happen. I tried to warn you, but no, you wouldn't listen. You just had to...” And then Prince John chases the snake trying to smash his mother’s mirror on him.  

Religions value listening too. Solomon summarizes the wisdom “Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise.” (Pr 19:20) Theologian David Mathis writes, "Poor listening diminishes another person, while good listening invites them to exist and matter.”  The fourth precept of Buddhism says speak rightly of others, and to do that listen well.  

What the Bible adds is that listening is also the way to love God. It’s kind of surprising! The oldest summary of the Jewish faith was a sentence called the shema. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” They said, “hear”. Listen. The beginning of a life with God was listening. Jesus made the same point about listening.  

“Listen to him.” the Father said. Most of the time when Jesus told a parable, he didn’t say, “Go and do likewise.” He said, “he who has ears to hear, let him hear.” This is different from religion 

Religion says, “Do good and maybe God will accept you, love you, and forgive you.” Your whole relationship with god begins with what you do. The Bible and the gospel start with “Listen”. It’s not about what you do. You listen. That’s how it starts. You simply be with God. 

That’s what good listening does. It puts us with other people.  

Heard a great story of powerful listening this week.   

A man spent about 15 years in the police department, especially working in the narcotics division. (https://vimeo.com/387666461, 25:00 ff)  

He retires. He actually decides to go and become a pastor.  

One day, he picks up the phone. It’s his chief! They haven’t talked in years. That day together in the duck blind was one of the best days of my life.  

What makes you different? I’m not. If anything, its because I’ve got church and the Lord’s important to me. 

What’s important is that Jesus is our Savior. 

You have no idea who I really am. You might be surprised. 

“I love you”. “I love you too chief.” He gets home and tells his wife, I think I might do something stupid.  

He bought a plane ticket. Got off work and went to the airport. Walked into the hospital. 

Looked at me, looked at his wife, “I just talked to you. Is this real?” Why would you do this for me?  

Last night, I said “I love you.” That was just shock. No man has ever said that to me. I realized that if I really did love you, I would do everything I could to make sure you knew I loved you, including tell you about Jesus.  

Can I please tell you about Jesus? “I think it is a good time for that.” 

What’s going on? He entered someone’s world. He left his own world and he traveled to someone else’s world. He is stepping into it. It’s surrounding him. It’s enveloping him. Consuming him. Do you know what is going to happen?  

What’s going to happen is. That moment and those words press on him. They push on him. That hospital room, that chief, they shape him and mold him. 

That’s what really great listening is. It’s leaving your own world and entering someone else’s world. That is exactly what happens to Peter, Andrew, and James. The cloud envelopes them. They have left their own world and traveled to the world of Jesus. They’re surrounded by him and his glory. It pushes on them. Confronts them. And then those words change you and them. Great listening changes us and them. 

I’m going to put to you, I think we need to let this happen. You can try to stay in your own world if you want. People do it all the time. Have you ever told someone, “who are you to tell me what to do?” Or maybe you’re a Bon Jovi fan. I kind of am. We recently got Guitar Hero back up at our house and I’ve rocked out “It’s My Life” a couple of times. What does that song say? It says, why should I listen to you. Why should I enter your world and see life from your perspective.  

A couple hundred years ago, people wouldn’t have asked this question. They wouldn’t have talked this way. Why? Because 500 years ago, people lived in a communal or collectivistic society. People made decisions about questions like who am I, what’s my place in the world, and what am I supposed to do with my life through the filter of “us”. People said, my grandpa was a blacksmith, my dad was a blacksmith, my brother is a blacksmith, I must be a blacksmith too. We live in an individualistic society. 

That means we answer questions like “who am I?”, “what’s my place in the world?” and “what am I supposed to do with my life” through the filter of “me” not “us”.  

I’m not saying that’s all bad. Sometimes people will answer the question in life of “who am I?” with the answer, my dad was a carpenter, now I’m a philanthropist. People are so much more likely to serve people. It’s much easier to answer the question, “How can I help you?” than it is to say, “how can we get together and help all those people?” So I’m not saying this necessarily a bad thing.  

Where it is a problem is when we say, “who am I listening to?” “who gets to speak into my life?” Because we’re most likely to answer, just me.  

I think we need to listen well, even if it changes our lives, because if ever there was a person who could have said, “Who are you to tell me what to do?” it was Jesus. Or he could have said, “It’s my life.”  

Instead what he says  

“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,” (Is 53:4)  

You think how do you carry someone’s pain? Jesus did it in a profound way. He listened to their sicknesses, the fears, and their questions.  

“Carry each other’s burdens” (Gal 6:2)  

Because if he has listened to us, how can we not listen to others?  

Action 

Listen to Jesus so you can listen to us.  

C.S. Lewis wrote an essay called, “At the Fringe of Language”. He said if your basic message is how to do something, language isn’t the best way to convey it. He actually said language isn’t very good at describing complex operations. He said, for example, if you’re trying to get across to somebody how to tie a Windsor knot in a man’s tie, don’t write it out in words. 

I’m convinced that’s why Youtube is so awesome. Men finally have a place to get directions that actually make sense to them.  

With Jesus we don’t have someone who gives us instructions. We get a message that says, I’ve died for you. I’ve risen for you. I forgive you. I accept you because of me. And I invite to  

Love to listen … and be loved.  

Love One Another: Let God deeply into your life so he can help the world through you.

Matthew 5:13-16

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.  

14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. 

Sermon

Who are the people who have really changed your life? ______________________, ___________________, _________________________ 

What made them such life changing people?  

Some of them probably did something great for you. Maybe you were literally rescued by someone who gave you an organ in your body, or just happened to be there when you wrecked your car, or maybe someone pushed you out of the way of a speeding car. Those people literally changed your life.  

The life changing people I really remember shared their lives with me. All of their lives – the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the beautiful and the ugly, the pretty and the awful.  

Yet somehow, through them, I still got something that changed my life. 

Take our seminary’s president. We’re talking about Romans ch 1. Mom said, “It’s just wicked Paul, just wicked.”  

Same man looks me in the eye and says, “I’m glad that you are going to pastor my son. I’m glad that you are going to be there with my son.”  

We got to do that in 2019. That’s one thing we’ve got to celebrate today. 2019 was a great year and God used his Word to change people’s hearts and lives.  

You can be someone who helps change the world.  

Basically the question is this: Who are the people that make a difference? The kind of people the world needs, where those people are 

Part 1  

“You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world.” In Jesus’ day, the Near Eastern times, salt was used as a preservative. They didn’t have freezers, so the only way to keep meat from going bad was to salt it like crazy. Light did basically the same thing.  

Jesus wasn’t talking about electric lights. He is talking about a candle or a wick in a cup of oil. If you have ever been in complete and utter darkness, not just a little dark, but utter darkness, you get a sense of vertigo and disorientation and my dad had a word when I was a kid – discombobulated. Any of you say that?  

The first thing that matters to change the world is that the world needs preserving.  

What Jesus is saying when he says the world needs salt and light is that the world, human existence, needs something to preserve it, order it, and locate it. He means human existence left to itself inevitably goes to greater and greater disorder, dislocation, and disintegration. To put it simply, things fall apart. Everything falls apart. Think about it physically. The human body falls apart.  

What’s the natural tendency of everything? Everything falls apart. Eventually we die and fall apart. As terrible as that it, everything is the same way. Petals fall of flowers. Their stems crumble. Rocks are crushed, they become pebbles, then sand, and finally nothing.  

Think of this relationally and socially. All relationships tend to go bad. Marriages have to be renewed every 7 years or so. Pastor and people relationships have about the same – 7 to 10 years. At that point they need a new vision, a new life cycle. The vast majority of our friendships grow quickly then fade. If you want to have a meaningful relationship with someone, you have to constantly work, constantly pray, constantly talk, and communicate to make sure you keep on connecting.  

The minute you stop working like that, things fall apart. There are social systems and classes and races. What’s the tendency? It’s toward disintegration. Disorder. Discombobulation.  

Think about energy, the universe. The first law of energy might say that things in motion stay in motion. The second law says that energy itself is running out. Eventually the earth is going to dry up or blow up or something.  

I think we feel this more than ever right now. This disintegration, disorder, discombobulation isn’t just physical, or relational, or social anymore, it’s even emotional or maybe even more correctly its spiritual. Just look at the cynicism we all have. There is deep cynicism about doctors and the medical system. We literally mock and scorn our doctors – oh, they’re just out for our money. Look at Americans trust in the government.  Only about 1 in every 5 of us trusts the government to do the right thing most of the time.  

There is a song I grew up with that perfectly summarizes the American spirit today for many. “It’s called American Idiot. It’s based on the music of a trio, Green Day. One review says. “It’s the depiction of a new American generation … bored, disaffected, cynical about their own cynicism. The chorus of one song is, ‘I don’t care if you don’t care.’ … That’s their default attitude to life in twenty first-century America.”  

Some of you are probably saying, well, yeah, pastor you aren’t saying anything that surprising. This is what I’ve always thought. Isn’t this what the Bible teaches? That everything is just going to hell in a handbasket. Yeah, sort of. But this is radical.  

See for Jesus the world was cyclical. History was cyclical. Take the Egyptians. There are no biographies of Egyptian pharoahs as best we can tell. They did that because they believed there was nothing unique or interesting about each one. They were each different manifestations of the Egyptian gods. The Egyptians are known to have an incredibly traditional culture to make sure everything returned to cosmic harmony and order each year. It was all about the seasons and the farming.  

That lasted until about the 1700s. We are born and bred and raised in a world infused with what sociologists call “the myth of progress”. That means, since we are kindergarten we are told, hey things are pretty good in the world and they’re getting better and you can be part of it. We’re getting bigger, faster, smarter, stronger, kinder, more moral. One of our former leaders used the line “the arc of the moral universe”, implying that the universe inevitably moves in a certain direction. Toward a certain point.  

The one thing nobody believes?! That things are good but they slowly fall apart. 

That’s the one thing nobody says. Who wants to say that? Who wants to say everything falls apart? No one. That sounds like the epitome of hopelessness and despair.  

The people the world needs are people who know the reality of it. You can’t help if you add your voice too all the people who believe in the myth of progress. I'm all for progress. For sure. I use a lot of the developments of life all the time.  

There is no point going back to be a person who says, “All of history, all of life is cyclical.” Yes, that person adds some insight to life. You’ll teach us things.  

The person the world needs looks at life and says, “A lot of things are good, but they slowly fall apart.”  

Take an example. What kind of person does my family need?  

I leave my kids home and I say, okay, finish eating dinner, then clean everything up. Pick up the house a little bit. Put your pajamas on. And get into bed. I’ll be home about 8. I’ve got some meetings. Am I surprised and sad and angry when I walk in the house at 8 and the table is covered in food and the oven is still on and the living room floor is literally covered in legos. And as I turn to head up the stairs I hear audio books blaring from one room and the other room has VBS music. That’s not surprising. That’s just the way it is.  

You don’t walk into a house that was messed up by a bunch of kids and say, bad house, bad kids. You say, where is the positive influence? You don’t walk into a dark room and say, “bad darkness”. You walk into a dark room and say, “where is the light?”   

Where is the light?  

If the world needs preserving, who or what is the best thing for it? Or if the world needs ordering and  

Or rather it is God the Holy Spirit at work in you and through you by the Word.  

See, we radically underestimate the challenge of simply renewing things. Of bringing new life to something old. It is much easier to make new. And I’m all for progress and new things, but we just said that ultimately what the world needs is preserving, ordering. It needs renewal, not new. And we radically underestimate how hard that is.  

Take Coca Cola bottles. When I was a child, the icon of soda was dieing. The glass Coca Cola bottle. It was just fading out. I always liked going up north to my grandparents because their small town always had a few places that still had the old bottles. Everywhere else gave up on them. Too expensive. No on wants to return them. Too hard to refill. So much easier to fill a metal can onece and move on.  

A much better example is Sears. By my count ex CEO Eddie Lampert has spent closing in on 10 billion dollars on Sears trying to revive. It hasn’t worked one bit.  

Now realize what we got to see at Peace this last year.  

You and I, we got to see, not one, but multiple people do something amazing. They grew up hearing God’s Word. They heard the gospel and they believed it was true. Then who knows how many years went by and they gave it up. Did all kinds of other things.  

10, 20, 30, 40 years later they are back saying, not only do I believe in Jesus. I have this renewal and strong sense that I should connect with other people here at Peace under God’s Word. I’m going to put up with other sins so I can forgive and be forgiven. I’m going to repent so I can call others to repent.  

Do you realize how amazing this is?  

God has said there is a very limited, a very specific kind of person who is really going to do the most good in life. It’s the person who can bring out the best in something else. It’s the person who can  

Think about the best steak you’ve had. You can always tell how much I care about you based on how good the meat is when you come over.  

If I’ve made the time, I’ll put a rub on the meat and rub it in hours in advance, maybe days if I really have the time. And you’ll taste it. That steak, that roast will be so tender, so juicy.  

If I’m in a hurry, I’ll throw some salt on the top and quick beat it. Throw it on the grill. Call it good. It’s just not the same. You’ve got to let the influence deep down.  

Psalm 66:9-10 

9 he has preserved our lives  

and kept our feet from slipping.  

10 For you, God, tested us;  

you refined us like silver. 

For 

You don’t become salt and light by just waking up one morning and saying, I think I’ll be salt and light. You are salt and light. 

Whatever deep work comes after that, whatever testing, whatever trial, whatever hardship, that is always something to come back to and say, the gospel that God loves me in Jesus not because of what I do but because of Christ.  

Only he was the salt that was considered trash.  

Only he was the light that was snuffed out. 

Realize that? On the cross, darkness covered the whole world. Why is that? It’s because the light of the world gave up his light to fill your world with light.  

I don’t think I realized, when I professed faith in Jesus, just how long it was going to take to work the gospel all the way into my life.  

The chief influencer makes us great influences. 

Funny story drove this point home for me.  

What’s good parenting? Good parents face their own failures to do what is hard in the moment to have long term beautiful effects on a kid. If you just give your kid what they want, they’ll be a disaster.  

Momentary pain in yourself and someone else for long term gain. Momentary pain long term gain.  

Imagine a six year old daughter. She has those 2 teeth, right here, just dangling. Just hanging by a vein. All you want to do whenever you see her, you just want to flick em out. “No daddy, no, she screams. They’ll fall out.”  

It’s so bad, when you’re at dinner time, I snuggle up next to her and put my arm around her and poke at the teeth.  

That was real for us. Here is the part I didn’t do, but another dad told me about this.  

One night, he is reading. His wife yells from another room, “Steve”. He runs in. She is wrestling with the kid. His job is to pin the kid’s arms down while his wife grabs the tooth. You know this isn’t my story because my wife would never do that. She is too kind. The girl is writhing on the ground and she is just crazy.  

All before that she says, “I hate you I hate you I hate you. I’m never going to support you when you get old. You can’t live with me.  

As soon as the tooth is out, I love you, I love you I love you. Ooo, it feels so funny, so weird.  

This is the job of parenting.  

This is the job of Christianing.  

"Love without truth is sentimentality. … Truth without love is harshness. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent.” (Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage)  

Let God deep in your life so he can help the world. 

Love One Another: Come to clarity

Matthew 4:12-23

12 When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee. 13 Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali— 14 to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah:

15 “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
    the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan,
    Galilee of the Gentiles—
16 the people living in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
    a light has dawned.”[a]

17 From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Jesus Calls His First Disciples

18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 20 At once they left their nets and followed him.

21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22 and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Jesus Heals the Sick

23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Listening guide

Who we are to others is based on _____________ __________ __________

Only ____________________ can start to see. 

Follow the thread

Come to clarity

Discussion questions

Love One Another: People can bring pleasure

Matthew 3:13-17

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.

16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Listening guide

Relationships – hard?  

• “I’m trying to connect with you” 

• “I’m just trying to love people”  

• “Why is it that so many Christians make such lousy human beings?”  

• Half of Americans view themselves as lonely.  

• Confidants = 0 

Jesus connects with people 

• Peter’s mother 

• The first disciples 

• Sick family members, poor people, mourning individuals 

Today’s question: why be with people?  

“This is my son” (verse 17)  

“With him I am well-pleased" (verse 17)  

The Triune God shows the _____________ of ____________. 

“it is proper to do this to fulfill all righteousness”. (verse 15)  

The prince of England, the first astronauts, and the dean - “The answer is here, wherever it is that faith resides”.  

Jesus fulfills every _________________.   

Mark 12:30-31 “30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these. 

People bring great pleasure 

Discussion questions

Sermon

 This week I had one of those hard relationship conversations. We were working through an issue. One of us said, “hey, I’m trying to connect with you here.” I.e. cut me a little slack, I'm working on this, we can do this. There was this awkward moment of silence that basically said, “yeah, and how is that going for us?” Sometimes building relationships can be hard.  

I remember telling someone one time, “I’m just trying to love people.” Even as I said it, I knew the only reason was because we hadn’t really loved people well.  

Pete Scazzero, who is something of an expert on relationships, because in his own words he was so bad at them for so long, he tells this story. He says one time a friend came to him and said, “Why is it that so many Christians make such lousy human beings?” He said, “Why is it that so many are judgmental, defensive, and touchy?” 

I’m not saying this is only our problem. Americans are bad at relationships. The results of a major study from Cigna were reported in 2018. “Half of Americans view themselves as lonely.” (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/05/01/606588504/americans-are-a-lonely-lot-and-young-people-bear-the-heaviest-burden). And the percentage is higher among younger people than older people. Think about that. Glance around this room. Of the people under 45, it is likely that 2 out of 3 feel lonely.  

Do you know what the most common response to how many confidants do you have in your life is? 0. I have no one in my life that I can really be close to, that I can really be transparent and open with. 

We struggle with relationships.  

One thing I love to see in Jesus is how good he is with relationships. During Epiphany – these 6 weeks or so between Christmas and Lent – we see how is really good at everything. He can fix what is wrong with the world. He can teach God’s Word with authority. He knows how to impress, wow, and overwhelm people. And he is really good connecting with them.  

He talks to Peter’s mother at her house and she loves him. He invites men to follow him and they get up and go. People come to him in all sorts of desperate situations – sick family members, poverty, and even death, and in every case he figures out how to show them what’s really wrong but still get them to appreciate him. It’s just remarkable. I think there is something for us here.  

You can and should use Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Or if you haven’t considered Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, you’re missing out. They show us many reasons we stink with people.  

But there is a power available to us. When you combine emotional health and good relational practices with God’s power and God's spirituality, it is truly life changing. You will be transformed.  

That’s what the Triune God wants to do for us over the next few weeks. He starts with a simple thing: why be with people. What could people do for us. In coming weeks he has some other things: here is how to make your expectations clear in a God pleasing way, be sure to deal with the underlying issues that get in the way, and then are you really present for people. Today it’s an easy start: why be with people. It’s two things: who God is and what he does.  

Part 1 

We’ve got an event in Matthew 3 we call the baptism of Jesus. It shows us amazing and remarkable individuals.  

We start with Jesus. He comes to John at the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. After he is baptized, a voice announces from heaven, “This is my Son.” (baptism of Jesus picture) So we know Jesus is a Son. No big surprise there. Every male human being is a son of someone. I guess the surprise would be if you expected Mary or Joseph there. Instead it’s a voice from heaven.  

If the voice says, “This is my Son”, that means the speaker must be the Father. And in between the Spirit descends as a dove. This is what we call the Trinity.  

Tri-une. Trinity. I suppose if you don’t like the word, you can talk around it. You can avoid it. It’s not used in anywhere in the Bible. It simply means “three - one”. It’s not really smart. Geniuses who came up with this name. Three – one. If you can say, supercalifra …. Trinity shouldn’t be a problem.  

These three persons closely relate to each other. They don’t just do and say things that impact each other. There is more. The Holy Spirit comes down in the form of a dove and lands on Jesus. He connects to the Son. The Father says something personal and individual to the Son. He connects with the Son. They all connect with each other. And there is something remarkable about it all. Verse 17 “with him I am well-pleased".  

How much do you like other people? If you are in the early stages of a dating relationship or first year of marriage or you just had a baby, you’re like “Me, me, me, me” (make kissy action). The rest of us are kind of like, uh yeah, people. We’ve said the line from Charles Schulz “I love humanity – it's people I can’t stand.”     Relationships are so hard. Sometimes personal connection feels pointless. But that’s not the Triune God.  

I’m going to come down to you (the Holy Spirit) and with you I am well pleased. The persons of the Trinity actually want to connect to each other. They’re family, but not really. This is not grandpa and grandma gushing over the grandkids.  

The Triune God is totally content. The three of them. They have a great relationship. The relationship is so awesome that we’ve got a way to describe God’s existence: aseity. It means God’s self-existence or self-sufficiency. He is not in any way dependent on other beings. Let me just draw your attention two awesome aspects of God’s self-existence.  

On the one side, the relationship that the Son and the Father have is so intimate, so close that Jesus can say, “I and the Father are one.” You begin to taste this when you’re married and you have a kid. You find yourself saying, “Oh my gosh that kid is me, that kid is my wife. That kid is us, all in one.” But you can be married for 10 years, 50 years and you will still find out something new about your spouse. You will never fully see through the other person. You can’t know them fully. Jesus can say, “I and the Father are one.” That is the one side of their relationship. So intimate.  

The other side, Jesus and the Father are firmly independent of one another, and the kind of emotional entanglement and relational entanglement that characterizes our relationships isn’t a problem for them. Let me give us a quick example. You know you have an unhealthy relationship with your father when you can’t do anything without his approval. Or when you are anxious if he isn’t around. Or if you feel unnecessarily guilty or ashamed about things. That’s a sign of a codependent relationship. That’s not Jesus.  

After Jesus rises from the dead, he tells Mary, don’t cling to me. “I’ve got to go to my God”. Jesus is going to return to his Father so there is a closeness still. But there is a separation. He calls him “my God”. It’s like calling your dad “my manager”. One of the clearest examples is on the cross. He calls out and says, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.” You notice he doesn’t say, “My father my father why have you forsaken me.” He says, “My God my God.” That’s the other side of their relationship. Firmly independent. They’ve got a genuinely interdependent relationship. It’s no wonder the Father says, “with you I’m well pleased.”  

They actually like each other. They’ve got a great relationship.  

The Triune God shows the pleasure of people 

Take this to heart. I think a lot of us hear, “family relationships bring pleasure”. This is more. Connection, real relationship brings pleasure. If you go back to Genesis 2, and we’ll do that sometime, you see you and I were built in the image of the Triune God where there is an usness, a community 

We need to take a look at this reality and process it. This is the end of isolation, putting up walls, blocking other people out. This is the end of loneliness. Other people can bring pleasure. The persons of the Trinity brought each other pleasure. 

Part 2 

Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that marvelous? When I see that, I just marvel at it. There is incredible power at work here.  

Why? What does God do to make this relationship?  

Jesus has this great line to explain why he is getting baptized. He shows up to John. John is his rough and tumble cousin. Immediately recognizes him. John is repulsed by the idea that he should baptize Jesus. Jesus says “it is proper to do this to fulfill all righteousness”.  

This is straight up, straight forward gospel. Jesus has this amazing relationship with his father. Everything is good. Still he will satisfy all the expectations and requirements. 

Every other religion says to us “You live a righteous life and give it to God. You offer yourself and if you are good enough, maybe you can please God and he will accept you. Christianity says, “Jesus has lived a righteous life and he gives it to you.”  

Jesus wants to be your substitute. He wants to live in your place. He will do all the expectations and requirements.  

Let me give us an example. I don’t even know if they meant to but they did such a good job. Some of you might have seen this story from “The Crown”. This is the story of Prince Philip and the first astronauts to reach the moon.  

What happens is that you’ve got the prince of England, Prince Philip. He goes through some a crisis. It starts one day at church. He can’t stand the dean and his preaching. He leaves.  

They get a new dean. About the same time, the first astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin – don't you all want to say Buzz Lightyear every time you have to say his name?- and Michael Collins go to the moon. The way the story goes, not sure if its accurate, is that Philip was absolutely enamored by this. For weeks, even months it was all he talked about.  

The dean invites him to join something of a spiritual retreat. There are about 8 men discussing religion and their place in the world. They’ve lost their way they feel. They have no sense of significance, value, and meaning. The prince listens patiently. Then finally he explodes. He mocks the men for doing nothing. These astronauts, they are real men. They have actually done something meaningful with their lives.  

The prince gets to meet the astronauts. He asks them how it felt. What did the sense as they looked down on the earth or as they stepped onto the moon? The way the story goes, they’ve got nothing. They were so busy with the tasks that the never reflected. They were so shallow that it never dawned on them to consider the smallness of their lives, the majesty of God’s creation, their own meaning and significance. They want to ask him about the palace, the driver, and his wife as queen – all these shallow and insignificant things, in his mind.  

He returns to the circle of men to discuss greater spiritual matters. “[I’ve experienced] an almost jealous fascination with the achievements of these astronauts. An inability to find calm, satisfaction, or fulfillment. … My mother died recently. She saw that something was missing in her only child. Faith. How is your faith, she asked me. I admit I’ve lost it. The loneliness and the emptiness and the anticlimax to go all the way to the moon and to find nothing but haunting desolation, ghostly silence, gloom.... I’m trying to say that the solution to our problems is not the science or technology or bravery. The answer is here, wherever it is that faith resides.” The vicar sits in silence.  

There is nothing he can say. Only one person can handle all the weight of our hopes, our dreams, our expectations, and our requirements.  

Only Jesus said, “I am doi  He made the meaning of his life to fulfill what was required of you and me.”  

If you put your demands and your expectations on someone else in this life, do you know what we call that? That’s a savior. That’s an idol. 

Only one person has fulfilled all our dreams, our hopes, our longings, and ex A lot of us need to take this to heart in our families, our friendships, our workplaces, and our communities. We all have relational expectations. The more we make someone else carry those expectations, the more we are likely to get crushed and crush someone else.  

The devil is busy saying to us and through us, You need this in order to be pleasing.” Jesus says, “That will not make you pleasing. It’s only the Word of God that will make you pleasing. Bread will not satisfy you. It’s God saying, ‘You are my beloved child.’ ” 

What makes God’s relationship so wonderful, so full of pleasure?  

Jesus fulfills every expectation.  

Action 

The heart of healthy relationships is Jesus’ summary of the law. Mark 12:30-31 “30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these. 

Realize that you can’t love God without loving others and you can’t love others without loving God. The two are inextricably linked.  

It’s only as we begin to see the awesome relationship that God has in himself that we are going to experience true love in our relationships.  

People bring great pleasure when you let Jesus fulfill all the expectations, all the righteousness.