Our Favorite Things: Relationships

Bad Blood | December 3, 2023
Logan Holloman | Next Gen Pastor

We all need relationships but no human relationship can be all we need

Genesis 25:19-34 — Isaac, Jacob, Esau

Genesis 27 — Defying God, deceiving, lying, running

Genesis 28:10-20 — Aha! "God is here"

Genesis 29:16-20 (NIV):
Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah had weak eyes, but Rachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful. Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.”
Laban said, “It’s better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me.” So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.

Genesis 29:16-30 — Consumed by desire, ignored deception

Genesis 29:21 (NIV):
Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to make love to her.”

If you are too afraid of love or too enamored by it, it has assumed godlike power, distorting your perceptions and your life.
— Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

Genesis 29:31-34 (NIV):
When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.”
She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.” So she named him Simeon.
Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” So he was named Levi.

Genesis 29:31-34 — Vying for love and commitment

Genesis 29:35 (NIV):
She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

Leah might have had a sense that there was something special about this last child. She may have the intuition that God had done something for her. And he had. Certainly, the writer of Genesis knew it. This child was Judah, and in Genesis 49 we are told that it is through him that the true King, the Messiah, will someday come. God had come to the girl that nobody wanted, the unloved, and made her the ancestral mother of Jesus. Salvation came into the world, not through beautiful Rachel, but through the unwanted one, the unloved one.
— Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

Matthew 22:37-39 (NIV):
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

• Call if for what it is…sin
• Surrender
• Choose to treat others as “Thou” rather than an “it”

Reflection Questions:

1. Create your own relationship timeline (last week, month, 6 months)? What sticks out to you?Do they have the ability to determine your eternity?

2. Whom do you seek validation?Who’s words carry the most weight?

3. What is one specific relationship in your life that God is inviting you to patiently trust him today?

4. What adjustments might you need to make to treat the people in your life as “Thou” rather than an “It”

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Notes Page: https://journeybozeman.com/sermons/notes/2023.12.03.pdf