Love in the Making 2019

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Proverbs 365 Ministries

Dee Casper

When it’s not Good for Man to be Alone

God in heaven, I thank you for the privilege to pray.

I thank you that I believe you have a blessing for us today and I just ask that you would speak with clarity, with conviction, and that your will above all would reign supreme.

All right, so I believe in Genesis chapter 2 God gives us a great framework of what He intended in regards to the purpose of relationships.

I believe Genesis 2 gives us a lot of good information.

In fact, you've heard true sermons this morning already quoting from Genesis 2.

So, some of our points may overlap, but that's okay.

It just means it's a point that needs to be made.

So, in Genesis chapter 2, I also believe that it gives great counsel for those of us who are single and desire relationship.

I think there's some good parameters and principles here that would do us well.

So, it says in Genesis 2 in verse 18, and the Lord God said, It is great for man to be alone.

And as a single minister of the gospel, there was quite a season in my life where I said, I praise God for the fact that that verse is in the Bible, that it's not good for man to be alone.

But I did not understand the whole background of that verse until later.

In fact, 1 of those sermons I was talking about in the first seminar about Pastor Mike at Transformation Church was helpful for me.

He's got a message called, single but not alone, but it's not that 1, it's before a person, before the person or something like that, that was really, really helpful.

So it says, it's not good for man to be alone, but then he says, I will make him a helpmate comparable to him or a helper comparable to him.

Now, I have some questions though, because when you read the narrative of creation it says He created the fill in the blank and it was good.

But then God in a perfect environment says that something is not good.

And so it must be that God has made us so radically relational that even paradise was not enough.

That sense of wanting connection and community, it's for a reason, right?

And so God made us with a relational nature, and here's why.

The Bible says in 1 John 4 and verse 8 that God is love, Right?

And love is not able to exist in isolation.

Just imagine, like, if God is the only being that has ever existed, How could God be love if he's the only 1 there?

No, you need to have a party to love, to be love, right?

And so 1 Corinthians 13 kind of alludes to this.

It says that love suffers long, it defines what love is.

It does not envy, it does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things." So God has always been the source of other-centered love, right?

It's always thinking of others, which means there had to have been others other than Him.

And so, which I just said that, so even before the creation of angels and eventually of man, God himself is a family of 3 co-eternal persons.

Which is very interesting and heartbreaking that there is a massive attack on this topic in Adventism right now.

The anti-trinitarian movement is just steaming right now over a lot of these issues, but it completely denies the intrinsic value of what God teaches in His own nature, that God Himself is love.

And so it says in Genesis 1, verse 26, that God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

And then it says, let them have dominion and so forth.

If God says, let us make man in our image, that implies that there's more than 1 of them, for 1.

Well, God made man in His image, and His image in this creation includes family.

God Himself is a family, and He creates a family, right?

So I believe that there's some reasons why it's not good for man to be alone based upon this.

It deprives us of the opportunity to enter into the object lesson that marriage and parenthood provide in other-centered love, in living and giving for another.

You can't learn that by yourself, And if you're by yourself, you're going to live for yourself, which is not the way that heaven does life.

So 1 of the reasons why it's not good for man to be alone is the fact that you're left to live and give for me.

Well, let me go to this first, and I'll go to these quotes from Ella White.

Experientially, in the covenant of marriage, we learned things about Him that we couldn't learn any other way.

For married couples, they are experiencing things that teach them about the character of God that I cannot know because I'm not a married man experientially and God wants us to die to our selfishness and be made into his image of other centered love This is 1 of the reasons why it's not good, right?

Because you'd be prone to live and give for me.

She says, On the morning of October 23rd, 1879, about 02:00, the Spirit of the Lord rested upon me, and I beheld scenes in the coming judgment.

Language fails me, she says, in which to give an adequate description of the things which passed before me, and of the effect they had upon my mind." So whatever she saw, she couldn't find words to communicate how profound it was.

"...the great day of execution of God's judgment seemed to have come.

10000 times 10000 were assembled before a large throne, upon which was seated a person of majestic appearance.

Several books were before him, and upon the covers of each was written in letters of gold, which seemed like a burning flame of fire, ledger of heaven.

1 of these books containing the names of those who claimed to believe the truth was then opened.

Immediately, I lost sight of the countless millions upon the throne." She stopped seeing them.

And only those who are professedly children of light and of the truth engaged my attention.

And as these persons were named 1 by 1, and their good deeds mentioned, their countenance would light up with a holy joy that was reflected in every direction.

But This did not seem to rest upon my mind with the greatest force." And these are amazing things.

So what was the thing that rested upon her with so great force?

Another book was opened, wherein were recorded the sins of those who professed the truth.

And listen to this, under the general heading of selfishness came every other sin." Literally, Ellen White is given a vision and in this vision she sees a book, the Ledger of Heaven, and in this Ledger of Heaven what she's witnessing is people's names and next to their name is selfishness.

And then she says, there were also headings over every other column and underneath these, opposite each name, were recorded in their respective columns the lesser sins.

You know, like murder and stuff and adultery.

But the primary sin that's listed next to our books in the ledger of heaven, she says, is Selfishness.

She says in First Selected Messages, and she makes this point, she says, Christ is to receive supreme love from the being He has created, and He requires also that man shall cherish a sacred regard for his fellow human beings.

Every soul saved will be saved through love, which begins where?

Thomas Jackson talked about that this morning.

But she says, true conversion is a change from selfishness to sanctified affection for God and for 1 another." And then listen to this, "'Will Seventh-day Adventists now make a thorough reformation that their sin-stained souls may be cleansed from the leprosy of selfishness?' Whoa.

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When it’s not Good for Man to be Alone

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