First Southern Baptist Church of Coalinga
Worship Service Message Outline and Scriptures for Sunday, October 8, 2017
Today we’re starting a series of messages entitled “Banner of Love”. Our love relationship with Jesus is critical to our joy in Him!
I want to start today by looking at an unusual example of the love we first had when we received Christ as our Savior. Being saved from eternal punishment for our sins by our faith in Christ, is a great victory! Having said that, our love we first experienced in Jesus was generated by what we “received” through Christ our Savior! I’d like us to look at an example of love that was discovered through a great victory! Let’s look at
I Samuel 17: 57 – 18:3.
I Samuel 17:57-58 NKJV
I Samuel 18:1-3 NKJV
In this passage we learn that David slew that great Philistine, Goliath, this was a great victory, saving Israel from the enemy! Jonathan was so taken by what David had accomplished and the security it brought Israel that he was joined in his heart and in his soul to David and David was toward him! This was more than just a new friendship, it was the bonding of souls between two men of God!
This very important life event between Jonathan and David and the victory for Israel is a typology of our deliverance from total destruction for our sin, through the victory Christ gave us through the Cross!
Can you see the correlation of our joy of victory we have received when we first met Christ, bonding our souls together with Him. Our love for God is now based on the marvelous work He did on our behalf. Our love for Him was new and fresh. But this first love of victory in Christ is only the beginning of a great love relationship with God, a love relationship that God is ready to reveal to us when we’re ready to receive it. This first love experience with Jesus our Savior is just the beginning of a great and unexpected love relationship with Him.
There is a transition that can take place in Christians’ lives that can bring their love for Jesus beyond the Cross to the Throne He sits on today. It can bring us to acknowledge Him as our King with all authority and reigning power in our lives.
His Kingship in our lives is a door to a deeper love relationship with Him!
Every believer in Christ has the opportunity to pursue Him and discover the riches of God beyond their imagination! Let’s look at another typology of taking a step closer to a deepening love relationship with God. Let’s look at the Queen of Sheba when she visited Solomon in I Kings 10: 1 – 8.
I Kings 10:1-8 NKJV
The Queen of Sheba came to King Solomon because of the rumors she heard about the King’s fame. So she came and tested him to see if it was all true. After discovering that the King’s wisdom and wealth was exceedingly more than what the rumors even declared, the Queen was overwhelmed. She had no more spirit in her. She had all her questions answered by the King. She recognized what joy there was just serving in his presence.
Matthew Henry a 1600’s British Minister put it this way,
“Here the truth exceeded; and all who, through grace, are brought to commune with God, will say the one half was not told them of the pleasures and the advantages of wisdom's ways. Glorified saints, much more, will say of heaven, that the thousandth part was not told them, 1 Cor. 2:9. She pronounced them happy that constantly attended Solomon. With much more reason may we say of Christ's servants, Blessed are they that dwell in his house; they will be still praising him.”
Like the Queen of Sheba, we too, as we grow in knowledge of Christ and commune with Him, will discover that there is even more to God’s wisdom, riches and love than we can fathom and a great joy of just being in His presence.
In this series, we will look at the progressive phases of our pursuit of the Lord. Let me share a quote as we end this introduction to our series “Banner of Love”:
“Spiritual fellowship with the Lord in the hidden, secret place of the heart is a very sacred thing…God, Himself, has opened to us by His own revelation that fulness of this sweet and Holy fellowship so that He may make us to know the paths of love and at the same time, challenge us to walk therein.”
Taiwan Gospel Bookroom, January 1954
Many Christians are content with a mere legal union with Christ the Lord. And like Porky Pig at the end of a Looney Tunes cartoon would say, “That’s Not All Folks!” The goal of this series of messages is to encourage every believer to reach a fuller and more mature love for Jesus!