Life Walk Bible Lesson 41 — God’s Love: Conditional and with Set Boundaries
Jesus makes it clear that when we obey Him, we remain in His love. He commanded us, Love one another as I have loved you.
John 15:4
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.”
John 13:34-35
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Love in the Wilderness
In the Book of Exodus, God gave Moses instructions as to how to build the Tent of Meeting, according to the heavenly pattern, where God could meet with His people.
It was built with the materials available to them, just as God asked Moses to use what was in his hand in order to show God’s mercy and strength to the children of Israel and the surrounding nations. This fabric Temple was portable and could be reconstructed each time they moved to wherever God placed His name.
Many years later, King Solomon desired to build a Temple for God in the earth, using the materials available to him in his day. His many writings, some of which are still available to us, describe a relationship with God through the eyes of love, experience, heartache, failure, knowledge, and the wisdom to choose the right way to live.
King Solomon sees something similar to what John is shown in the Book of Revelation, of the Bride of Christ, as he describes his love for a Gentile bride made pure. In his Song of Solomon, he describes love using architectural metaphors, for God is the Great Creator, Architect, and Arranger of all things. As Solomon’s Temple was built of wood, it was burnt during a time of war, and completely destroyed.
There are more two patterns for a Temple of God, and its surroundings, given in Scripture. The reason for a Temple in the earth was always to provide a place to meet with God, to hear His voice, and to know His love as a “Father” or, “Husband”. [Isaiah 54]
As these two patterns are similar, and yet seen only in the Spirit realm until they are visible in the earth, we can call them:
*The Groom — Ezekiel 40-48
*The Bride — Revelation 21-22
These both come with structure, protection, and a place for everyone, according to who they are and what they have done in Christ, and the designation that God is There. [Matthew 25:31-46; John 14:1-3] These are permanent, eternal, indestructible structures, impenetrable by evil, reserved for the righteous in which God dwells with His Family.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit Who is in you, Whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” [1 Corinthians 12:13]
Scripture Reading: Colossians 1-2
John 14:23
“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”
God makes clear throughout Scripture that He is impartial in judgment, and that He is no respecter of one person over another — He loves all, as it is written in John 3:16-17. Even though at one time God chose this person or another for His work in the earth, or one nation or another for His purposes in His Kingdom, He desires all people to come into His Family. [Romans 10:12]
The Apostle Paul puts it this way:
Galatians 3:28
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
In Acts 9:15, and 13:47, the Lord God designates Paul an Apostle to the Gentiles, and to their kings, and to the people of Israel — the progression of the preaching of the Gospel from that time until the coming of Christ Jesus once again to earth. First to the Jew and then to the Gentile [Romans 2:9; Romans 15:12], but then, after being rejected by the Jews of his day, Paul was sent to the Gentiles, and ultimately once again the Jews will be witnessed to before the coming of the LORD. [Romans 11:25; Romans 11:11-12]
Galatians 3:8
“Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’” [Acts 13:26; Romans 3:22; Isaiah 11:10; 42:1-3, 6]
Ephesians 3:6 (NIV)
“The mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. [Genesis 10, specifically verse 5]
From earliest recorded history, “the Gentiles” referred to the nations which served other gods besides our Father in Heaven, the One True God, and Creator of Heaven and Earth. These nations, the sons of Noah who rebelled against God and did as the pre-flood generations did, including worshipping idols of wood and stone, and sacrificing to demons, are the nations to which the gospel was now once again being presented, so that they too would come back into the Family of God.
Every nation, tribe, race and language was now once again being given access to God and His Kingdom. Because of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Who died for the sins of all mankind, everyone from every religion and belief system known to mankind, past, present and future, which does not worship the God of Heaven, has the chance to come to Him by leaving their idols, and worshipping the One True God, as a son or daughter of God.
[See also: 1 Corinthians 12:1-3; Galatians 3:13-14; Galatians 3:6; Romans 3:29-30; Romans 9:25; 10:12]
Acts 7:44-46 (KJV)
“Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as He had appointed, speaking to Moses, that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen. Which also our fathers that came after brought in with [Greek:] Jesus [Hebrew:] [Joshua] into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drove out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David; who found favour before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.”
Colossians 3:11
“Here there is no Gentile, or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” [See also: Acts 10:28, 34, and 45; 11:18; 15:5, 7]
Colossians 1:27 (KJV)
“To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:”
God’s Faithful Love
Ephesians 3:4-21
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”
