Relating to Relationships

Gen. 1:26-27 + Ecc. 4:7-12 + 1 John 4:7-12

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You're listening to RUF at KSU Podcast. This semester we're doing something a little different. We're doing a series on relationships. And so we're actually going to be jumping around a bit. We actually have three different passages we're going to look at tonight. But the reason we're doing it is because we actually think the Bible has a lot to say about relationships. That it's something it speaks on very authoritatively. And then if you're here tonight and you are a follower of Jesus, or maybe you're here tonight and you want to know more about what it means to follow Jesus, then you too want to know what the Bible says about relationships. So we're going to be in three different places. The first place is Genesis chapter 1, starting in verse 26. But we'll also jump to Ecclesiastes chapter 4. That may be a book of the Bible that you're not as familiar with. That's okay. It's a good one. And then finally, we're going to look at 1 John chapter 4. All of it will be on the screen, but feel free to follow along in your own Bible as well. Alright, but here now the word of the Lord. We're going to start with Genesis 1, starting in verse 26. Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female, he created him. And then jumping to Genesis chapter 2, verse 18. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Alright, jumping now to Ecclesiastes chapter 4, starting in verse 7. Again I saw vanity under the sun. One person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil. And his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure? This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. And then finally, 1 John chapter 4. Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Alright, so we're continuing our series on relationships. And tonight what we're doing is we're really kind of like setting the table for the rest of the semester and all we're going to be talking about with relationships. So tonight the focus is relating to relationships in general. When you hear relationships, some people automatically think romantic relationships, but we're going to be covering a whole lot more than just romantic, your relationship with your parents, your friends, etc. etc. But thinking about relationships, you know, it's always important to like kind of understand the nature of a relationship, you know, how you relate to someone else. And misunderstanding that can be pretty devastating. This is a true story. When my wife and I, when we got married, my wife used to like babysit a lot of kids. And uh so instead of having like one flower girl or one ring bear, she's like, I want all the kids to like come down together, you know, in like a children's parade. So it was really cute. We got all these kids together, and one little boy she had been babysitting, his name was Reed. I think he was like four or five years old at the time. Uh, really cute, and you know, one day when she was babysitting him before the wedding, she said, like, hey, would you would you be in my wedding? Would you be a part of the wedding in this way? And he was so excited, yes, I can't wait. So uh, you know, we do the wedding and all that, and uh, it's like a month later, we're talking to Reed's parents, catching up with them, and they were like, Oh man, we didn't tell you, but after the wedding, Reed, he was devastated. He burst into tears. I'm like, why? What happened to Reed? Why did he cry? And said, Well, on the drive home, uh, Reed said, Hey, when are we going to the wedding? When's the wedding happening? Like, buddy, we just had the wedding. We're leaving the wedding right now. And he's like, but, but I thought I was marrying Kelsey. That this little five-year-old boy thought that my wife, my now wife, had asked him to marry her. And he didn't understand that uh they were leaving the wedding because she had married someone else, namely me. Poor guy. He didn't understand the nature of the relationship. It's really important to understand the nature of the relationship. Uh so what we're looking at here, the main thing I want you to take away, we're gonna come back to this point again and again throughout the series, is that you were created by God to love and to be loved in relationship with God and others. And maybe that sounds like a really obvious point, and yet it's so key to the Bible's understanding of relationships. That you were created by God to love and be loved in relationship with God and others. And I've got three points tonight which will map onto the three passages we read. The first up is you were created for relationships, our struggle with relationships, and then how we're redeemed through relationships. So much excitement out there. Alright, let's look first at uh how we are created for relationships. Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. Alright, so this is like the very beginning of the Bible. God is making mankind. And it tells us a lot in this very short passage. It says, God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. Like the emphasis here is on the complexity of the creation. That the complexity of crafting something actually reveals the care of the creator. And you all know this innately because, you know, when a friend says, hey, I'm gonna bring you a treat, and they're like, hey, I made this like homemade from scratch, it means more to you. Whereas, you know, if they get you something from the store, it's nice. You're like still grateful, but you're like, yeah, you know. But like the homemade thing, the homemade dessert, you know, the homemade whatever it is, it just means that much more. That God is saying, look, I am crafting humankind in this complex and this unique way. That mankind is not like any of the other animals. Most importantly, it's because God's own image is in mankind. It's a part of who they are. And part of the key here of understanding relationships is that the God who creates us and puts his image in us is then carried out in our need for relationships because God is already in a relationship before he ever creates humanity. God, the God of the Bible is a triune God, is a trinity. Maybe you've heard that before. And it's a bit complex and there's a mysterious element to it, but the way the Bible explains it is there's God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and they're unique in their identities and yet also one God. That the Bible doesn't talk about believing in many gods, but one God who is unique in his three persons. And so God, when he created humankind, it wasn't like God was lonely. Oh, I wish there were some people around that I could talk to. No, actually, God's saying, hey, we have so much love in this relationship in the Trinity already, that we want to invite more people into it. We want to create human beings so then they can experience this. That God didn't need us and yet He wanted us. He wanted us to experience that overflow of the relationship of love that already existed. That if we are made in God's image, both male and female, then we were made to be in relationship with other people. It's hardwired into us. So much excitement out there. A famous Dutch theologian Herman Baving puts it this way. He says, Look, a human being does not bear the image or have the image of God, but is the image of God. It's not like you have something imprinted on you that you can lose. Uh, it's not like you've picked it up on the side of the road, you know, temporarily and you might put it off. No, God's image in you and your hard wiring for relationships is something that cannot be removed from us. It's essential to being a human being. And look, y'all, we see this because God creates Adam first, but then we saw in Genesis chapter 2 he says it's not good for him to be alone. I mean, this is before sin entered the world. So, like Adam, you know, he's got like perfect genetics, you know, like he looks the way he wants. He felt good about his life, his body, his work. He had no regrets about his life at all. He didn't lack for any good thing. And yet, God still said it's not good for him to be alone. That you can go out in the world and like, you know, get your dream job and have your dream body and have your dream income and all of that. But if it's apart from relationships, you're lacking something absolutely key and essential to life. Absolutely key and essential to what God has created you for. We see the struggle with this all over. I mean, uh, there's all sorts of news articles you can read about like how Japan, one of the most advanced countries in the world economically, technology-wise, has massive rates of loneliness. So much so that they hired a government minister of loneliness to try to like address this from a government level. That loneliness and separation from people, even when we have all the food and economic security and everything, we still need the relationships. We are made for more than just food and shelter. Why does it matter though, that you're made in the image of God? Like, let's bring it down to where you are at today. Well, what that tells us is that when you feel lonely, when you're really feeling your singleness, uh, when you long for deeper friendships and you're tired of like the shallow just get-to-know you questions, when you want just even like one person on this campus to know you truly, that that all comes from how God designed you. It's not wrong to want to have friends, it's not wrong to want to be married or even to want to be physically intimate with someone. Now, the Bible has a lot to say about like how to go about that in a godly way and an ungodly way. But the desires for that are hardwired into us as a good thing. That when we act like those things are wicked in and of themselves, we're actually denying how God created us. That friends and spouses and sex are all a wonderful gift from God meant to be enjoyed in right relationships. Yes, we're in a relationship with God, but God recognizes it's not good for people to be alone. So we also made other people. So that we're in a relationship with God, yes, but also with God and each other. God's love for you has never been abstract, it's always been in flesh and blood with names. It's people in this room. And that's why we say it's really important when you show up, because actually your presence here actually makes it easier for someone else's presence here. It makes it better for someone else's experience here because you're here in person in flesh and blood. And that's why we emphasize the local church. That's one of many reasons, right? God commands us to go to church, yeah, worship him regularly, but also because God wants us to do the Christian life together. We're not meant to just have personal devotions and never worship with one another. It's key to what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And look, y'all, we know that R UF is not perfect, we're not claiming to be. But one thing we do hope you experience here is that relationships and community here actually feeds your faith in God and nourishes your desire to be known by Him and by others. Right? That you experience a little bit of that here more and more. So that's the first thing I want us to see is that we are created for relationships. But my second point here, let's go into our struggle with relationships. This is that Ecclesiastes passage. The language there might be a little confusing, but there's two things I want us to see here. The first is our struggle with relationships first are because of sin, this thing that enters the world, which we're going to talk a lot about next week in particular. But because of sin, we are innately selfish and self-centered people. That we're hardwired for relationships, and yet because of sin, we often do things that like separate us from relationships or engage in unhealthy relationships. It tries to put us in the place of God and demand that the rest of the world have a relationship with us based on our terms and not God's. And it's easier to see that in some than others. You know, it's easier to like point out a narcissist, oh, this person they only talk about themselves or self-focused, you know, and if anyone says anything against them, they just like go crazy. Or maybe the flip side of that, people pleasers. It's easy to think about people pleasers as like, oh, they're so other focused. But usually they're doing it because they want people to love them and respect them. That they're doing it from a desire, uh, a very self-focused desire to want to be loved. That sin is constantly working against our God-given need for relationships, either by pushing us away from others or pushing us towards unhealthy relationships. It's like we have this internal obstacle that we keep running into. You know, like we desire, our hearts desire healthy relationships, and yet we think uh we're only worthy of those if we can like prove our worthiness. We're only worthy of love if we're beautiful or successful or give of ourselves sexually, or if we're healthy or rich or strong, or we could go on and on. But it's like we're constantly saying, I can only get the love that I desire if I can prove just how worthy I am of it. This is beautifully illustrated by one of my favorite shows of all time, Avatar the Last Airbender. Give it up. Come on, come on. If you don't know, we'll pray for you. Uh, but one of the best characters in the show is a guy named Prince Zuko. He's yes. He starts off the show, uh, he's pretty miserable because the thing he craves for most is like his father's love. But he spoke out against his father one time, and his father, instead of forgiving him, literally burned his face. And so the whole show, he's trying to find a way back into his father's love. And he thinks, if I if I capture the Avatar, if I find him, then my father will be happy with me, then he'll love me, and then I'll finally feel fulfilled. My heart's desire will be fulfilled. And there's this uncle who travels with them, and he's constantly trying to get him to see just how broken his attempts are at finding love. But the whole show is going on and on of Zuko just keeps running into this internal obstacle if he thinks he has to prove why his father should love him. And it's this heartbreaking uh moments in this series. Alright, so that's the first thing I want you to see is that because of our sin, we're innately selfish and self-centered, and we keep running into this internal obstacle. The second thing I want you to see for our struggle with relationships is that we're constantly being told this message that relationships should take a backseat to other more important things. So I think of that meme where it's like if your friend group isn't talking about investing, stocks, real estate, then you need to get new friends. Because your network is your net worth. You know, it's all about like you've got to surround yourself with successful, smart people. You know, you've got to pick winners and losers of who you hang out with, because that's what's gonna make you happy and fulfilled and live a good life. Or maybe to bring an example more close to home, the number of times we're doing outreach, you know, we're at like a table on the green, and someone comes by asking what we're all about, and I'm like, yeah, you know, we're this campus ministry, are you interested? And they'll say, like, oh, I ain't got time for that. I've got to study. Like, I have to study. I don't have time for friendships, I don't have time for any of that. And you laugh, but like people literally say that to us all the time. Uh, it's this uh there are more important things in life than meeting people, than having deep relationships, than being known or experiencing love. Or think of the toxic messages that go out to men and women in different ways. For women, it's often these days like be a girl boss. You don't need anyone, prove just how little you need anyone in your life. Or men, it's often, you know, like women are a ball and chain, put off that kind of commitment as long as possible, sow your wild oats. It's these false ideas that feed this idea that if you're awesome enough, then relationships will just come naturally to you. You know, if you're just successful enough and beautiful enough and amazing enough, then people will just want to come and be your friend and be around you. You won't even have to try hard. But y'all, I'm here to tell you like that's absolute baloney. Relationships take hard work and they take intentionality and they take investing in people that you don't know how they'd benefit you at all, because it's not about that at the end of the day. That some of the richest friendships I have are not from people that I don't know, benefit my net worth in any way, but they benefit my life and my soul and my heart in so many ways. The number of times I've met a student who's even said, like, well, look, I'm here at KSU, but I know I'm gonna transfer in a year, so like I don't know why it's worth investing in any of this. Investing and getting to know anyone, because I'm not gonna be here all that long. Um, once again, somewhat harsh to say, but like, what an arrogant thing to say, what a utilitarian view of friendships. Look, y'all, one of my best friends, I met my freshman year of college, and I transferred from that school after my first year. So we didn't even go to school together ever again. And yet, like, we were both in each other's weddings, we still talk on the phone regularly. But if I viewed that as, well, I'm only here for a year, I'm gonna leave these people, it's not worth it, I wouldn't have that friendship. Or even better, y'all, I met my wife in the lunch line at a conference in another city when she also lived in another city. Like, talk about like someone you meet for like two seconds and you'll probably never see them again. My now wife, we met in that context. So, like, if you're only viewing relationships as, well, I know I'm gonna be committed here and I know what I can get out of it, then you're missing so many ways that God may want to bless you with relationships in your life. The beautiful thing is if you have faith in Jesus, that ultimately we are freed from the need to try to pick winners and losers. We don't have to play God and act like we know which relationships will matter and which won't. We can have the freedom to get to know people and to enjoy them and the image of God in them, even if it's a brief time. That otherwise we're working for vanity. We're working for emptiness, we're working for riches that aren't gonna last. And so that brings us to our final point here, which is that we're redeemed through relationships. That's our first John 4 passage. Why do we find relationships in general so challenging, whether it's with your parents or your roommates, or your co-workers, or the person you're dating? Well, you know, the truth is, like, if you're in a relationship with any other human being, it's risky. There is no way for it not to be risky. That person might not love you back in the way you want to be loved. They may hurt you, they may let you down, they may leave you or betray you even. That's what we often turn to is we look for strategies to try to simplify relationships in the hopes of avoiding pain. And I love this quote by two Christian authors speaking about relationships. They say, look, the truth is we all look for strategies or techniques to free us from the pain of relationships and the hard work good relationships demand. We hope that better planning, more effective communication, Clear role definitions, conflict resolution strategies, gender studies, personality typing, just to name a few, will make a difference. And there may be value in these things, but if they were all we needed, then Jesus' life, death, and resurrection would be unnecessary, or at best redundant. Skills and techniques appeal to us because they promise that relational problems can be fixed just by tweaking our behavior without changing the bent of our heart. But the Bible says something very different. It says that Christ is the only real hope for relationships. Because only he can dig deep enough to address the core motivations and desires of our hearts. That Christ is the only real hope for any of our relationships. That what we need is actually the redemptive power of relationships. And the truth is that God desired a relationship with you so much that he came down in the flesh in person to show you just how committed he is to redeeming you and knowing you and so that you could know him. That Jesus knows just how messy relationships are. He knows just how likely we are to betray him and to be unfaithful to him. And yet he doubled down on committing to his lost and sinful people. That in Christ Jesus, if you've put your faith in him, that you're actually now a son and daughter of the king, you're an heir to his inheritance, you're part of the bride of Christ. And even in John 15, Jesus says, I now call you my friends. It's not just one level of relationships if you've had faith in Jesus, it's multiple. And so if you've been captivated by the love of God, shown to us through his son Jesus, then you now have a foundation for love in your life that can withstand the risks of being in relationships with other people. Because they are risky. But it's not based on how much love that we have to give, but it's on the love that we've been shown by God. That God loved us first. That's the foundation we can love anyone from. That we can now love because he loved us first, and that you are beloved by God and can love out of his abundance of love. And look, we don't love perfectly now, but I love how 1 John puts it. The promise here is that if we abide in the love of God, that more and more our love is gonna be perfected. That you can grow in learning to love others, that you can grow in learning how to love your parents, even if they're extremely difficult, that you can grow in learning how to love your future spouses more and more, that you can grow to learn and love in relationships. That as Christians, we also now see the potential of the redeeming power of God in relationships. That are not, they're not just how people can benefit me, but what is God doing in them? And how can I see his glory poking out, shining out from them in little ways? That you get to be a part of that. You get to witness it and encourage it and see it. And so as we wrap up here, like we were made for relationships, and we do struggle with it because of sin, but the beautiful thing is that God redeems us, he perfects us through the work of Jesus, who calls us into a relationship by faith, so that we would see the redemptive power of all in redemption, in relationship with Him. And what better example of that than Prince Zuko in Avatar the Last Airbend? Because he's got this uncle, Uncle Iroh, who is with him the whole series. And Prince Zuko, like, he's so embittered by the way his father has mistreated him and his longing to just be loved by him and is thinking that he has to earn it, that he's just constantly going off on his own, trying to prove himself, failing miserably, and he's just more and more angry. And at one point he has an opportunity to finally get what he wants, but he has to betray his uncle, who is stuck with him through thick or thin. And he does it. He betrays his uncle, and he finally gets accepted back by his father, and he's like, I finally got what I wanted. But he realizes, man, it's all empty. This love that I thought I wanted, it was a commodified love. It was a love I had to work for, I had to earn, I had to pay for, and it's empty. I don't feel any better. I don't feel any happier, I'm just as angry as I always was. And so finally, Zuko, after hitting rock bottom, goes to find his uncle. And he falls down on his knees before him, and he's weeping and he says, Uncle, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that I betrayed you. And his uncle turns around and he embraces him and hugs him. And Zuko's like, How can you forgive me? You should be furious with me. And his uncle says, I'm not angry at you. I was sad. I was sad because I thought you lost your way. But you found it again. And hey, look, if you're here tonight and you're feeling beat up and worn out by broken relationships and wondering if you can ever find your way back again, the message of the Bible is clear. Look to the source of love, Jesus Christ Himself, and know that when you are lost, he can make a way back for you through the power of his redeeming love. Amen. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the good news of Jesus. That though we have uh betrayed relationships and been unfaithful to them and been hurt and abused by them, Lord, that you can bring healing. Lord, that you can restore what was broken and beyond hope. And Lord, when we have relationships in our own life where we wonder how there could ever be forgiveness, Lord, we pray that you would give us the hope of the gospel. That if God could love us, that He could also work through us to love the unlovable in this world. And Lord, we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.