“The Master’s Plan: His Love”

Series Title: The Master’s Plan Pastor Jim Lowe III

Sunday Morning, 9:30am Stream 06/14/26 (2nd Sunday Message)

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{All scriptures are “NIV84” unless stated}

We haven’t mentioned it a whole lot in the last few weeks but don’t forget the Lord has declared this

The Year of the Comeback

It’s not for everyone…but those who reposition themselves correctly.

As it’s June, we’re doing a major “check up” to make sure we’re doing the right things… and are keeping the right things in perspective.

Message Title:

The Master’s Plan: His Love

We are going to go over the plan that was set for us from the beginning. we’ll break it into 3 parts to see how the Lord always wanted things to be…

and gave the ultimate sacrifice to get there.

Part 1 - The Perfect Relationship

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He also created Adam and Eve.

This wasn’t a spoken command.

He formed him from the dust of the ground. he blew into his nostril the breath of life.

The Lord Spoke Everything Else In Existence But Wanted A Personal Relationship With Humanity

It wasn’t about just another creation… this one was diﬀerent.

The Bible says in Genesis 2:15 - the Lord “took” Adam and “put” him in the garden. he didn’t “tell him to go”

closeness - intimacy

The Lord Shows In The Beginning That He Loved Us Diﬀerent

The Lord had a personal relationship with him.

They spent time together.

and the Lord was even thinking of needs Adam didn’t know he had. no suitable helper was found.

so the Lord answered a question Adam didn’t know he had and he creates Eve

Humanity Was Created For A Relationship With The Lord

But the Lord laid rules for Adam and Eve.

do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the day you do, you will die.

Part 2 - The Separation

Genesis 3:1-6

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” 4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

She remembered the rules… she knew what she was told.

but the serpent phrased it JUST right…

to cause her to look at the fruit diﬀerently…

Genesis 3:6-7

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

we know Adam and Eve were tricked into doing it. after they do it,

their eyes are opened they are ashamed they hide

they are afraid

The Lord finds out..

Then there was all this punishment.

To the woman:

Genesis 3:16

16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

Then to the man:

Genesis 3:17-19

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Then the Lord put them out of the garden… separating them from him.

This leads to a question:

Did The Punishment Fit The Crime?

All of this punishment?? Why!?? Over fruit!? That’s not that serious!

that’s nothing compared to the things they could have done. they didn’t even lie about it when the Lord asked.

We are being honest and thinking about this like WE naturally do. But the Lord sees it diﬀerently.

his ways are not our ways

and his thoughts are not like our thoughts.

But it was actually not about the fruit so much.

The Lord COULD had removed the tree…

he COULD had made it on a mountain too high for them to climb

or surrounded it with hedges and bushes…where the couldn’t see it.

But it wasn’t the FRUIT on the TREE that was the problem. The problem/sin was their disobedience.

Their disobedience to what the Lord said.

this is why we can’t attempt to judge sin… They were disobedient in eating fruit…

not a huge deal until you look at it the way God does. sin is sin…

and SIN separates us from the Lord.

The First Sin Did Not Look That Serious On The Surface, But Sin Never Reveals The Full Price Upfront

The serpent told Eve that disobeying had a purpose… that it would make her like God…

but he didn’t tell her that it would be a cost.

Every Sin Creates A Cost. Every Compromise Has A Price

This isn’t the way we’re taught to look at things… we have a diﬀerent value system we live by.

We Live In A World Where We’re Taught That Not All Crimes Are The Same - Punishments Should Fit The Crime

We’re taught words in our justice system. Just a few:

Minor infractions Misdemeanors Felonies

And the severity of those determines what happens - IF WE GET CAUGHT We judge things based on how serious they look to US.

This is where our hidden sins come in.

we continue our hidden things because to us… “they aren’t a big deal.”

“We aren’t really hurting anyone…”

Yeah I curse every now and again… but I didn’t steal from anyone.

Yeah I tell lies every now and again but they’re only “white lies”

Yeah I don’t say things out loud… but my face and my thoughts…

God still working on me…

no he’s not…you won’t let him.

Which shows how messed up our thought process is… we don’t think too much of the stuﬀ we do…

but let someone not speak to you today. let someone cut you oﬀ in traﬃc.

or let someone say something to you you don’t like.

We don’t think the things WE do are a big deal

because we don’t fully understand the consequences The serpent asked a trick question to Eve about the tree.

she said we can’t eat from a specific tree or she would die

Genesis 3:4

4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The serpent shifted the attention away from the cost… and more to the benefit.

“That punishment isn’t real…”

“But you stand to gain so much more.” “Your eyes will be opened”

“You will be like God”

“You will know good and evil” The enemy does the same thing to us.

“God told you that stuﬀ is sin…but it’s not a big deal” “You aren’t hurting anyone.”

“You’ll gain so much more.”

“Money, pleasure, happiness, joy, satisfaction…” “What would you give to have those things?

It’s Easy To Ignore A Consequence When You Don’t Understand What It Really Costs You

Because sin is sin…

and a stainless God can’t be with a stained people… He had to separate Adam and Eve from him…

and that same sin separated us from him as well.

And just like the punishment Adam and Eve deserved… the punishment for sin requires death.

NO ONE is innocent… We ALL are guilty…

The Lord told Adam that the answer for sin was death.

There was no way around it…

but The Lord also had an answer.

Part 3 - His Love

Something started with Adam and Eve… they committed sin…

they were separated from God. when THEY had children…

THOSE children were born under that sin.

so the separation continued… All the way to us…

we were born under he same sins that Adam and Eve did and even if you want to argue that’s not fair,

We have sinned also.

Some of us sinned yesterday…some this morning… some of us are doing it right now.

We are either stained or we’re not… and we are ALL stained.

Romans 3:23

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

There was a punishment of death required for us…

So the Lord created a plan to return everything to the way it was supposed to be. What was that plan?

John 3:16-17

16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

God loves the whole world.

He loves EVERYONE he died for EVERYONE

for the believers

for the non believers

for the worst criminals

for the killer, abuser, thief, the manipulator, the child abusers and so on.

He solved the answer for death… by Jesus becoming a man…

and sacrificing himself

and dying so we would’t have to.

The Consequences Of Our Sin Is Our Death, But Someone Has Already Paid That Price!

He loved Adam so much…

and he therefore loves us.

Why Does The Lord Love Us Like This?

1 John 4:8(b)-10

God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

What is love? That he sent his son as a sacrifice And he has set us right where we need to be.

Romans 3:21-25(a) (MSG)

But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no diﬀerence between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. 25 God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear.

We are nothing without his sacrifice…

we deserved death because of the wrong we CONTINUE to do… yet through our sins…

he has been faithful.

The Cross Isn’t Proof That We Were Worth Dying For. It’s Proof That His Love Is Stronger Than Our Failures!

Some of us need to return to that love…

we try to show our love by coming to church

but we haven’t allowed the Lord to fully change us. we’ve forgotten the sacrifice that the Lord made.

We continue in our sins because we forget the cost of them.

we chase after pleasure, money, happiness, whatever sin…

and we forget that becomes another crack of the whip to Christ

The Cross Was Proof That He Still Wanted What Our Sins Tried To Destroy: The Perfect Relationship!

What does his love do for us?

It made us right with him when we didn’t deserve it.

Romans 5:8

8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While we were still sinners… Christ died for us.

Meaning…while we still enjoy: that pride

that ego that vice

that living UNLIKE a child of his… he still died for you.

Romans 5:7-8 (MSG)

We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by oﬀering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

We aren’t worth the love we’ve been shown…

but for some reason the perfect relationship was worth it.

Let’s commit today to get closer to that God.

and willing work to build that relationship with him!