So it's when we bring together the pictures of Jesus that we get the proper picture of Him, and you'll see if you've only got one aspect of Him, you get a distorted view of Jesus, and it will affect how you live your life and represent Him. Think about that. See, if someone only knew me as a teacher they'd have no idea of the whole sphere of life I have as a global minister of God. They'd have no idea at all, so they say: oh well he just taught physics and maths, that's what he did, and he was quite good at teaching, and we did pretty well. But their concept is completely limited, so if they had to tell someone about me, they wouldn't really even tell them half the story. They'd have been missing out 20-30 years, do you understand that? That's why you need all the facets of it - so the first thing to see is, He is a passionate bride groom.
Now I'm going to use the word bride groom, rather than just that He loves us. We need to get up above that. He is a groom. Now here's some things about the groom. From the Bible perspective, the number one, He pursues us. You didn't suddenly have a good idea to come to Jesus; He sent the Holy Spirit to activate some people to pray for you, and pursue you, so the first thing about Jesus, He pursues people. Why does He pursue people? Because He's passionately in love with us, and He just puts His love into action, came out of heaven, came into the earth, and then He began to pursue people. Not only does He pursue us, He initiates a unique kind of relationship called covenant. That's why you need to know Him as a groom, not just Jesus, your saviour. He is a bride groom. A groom is a person who initiates covenant with a woman. Understand that - we've got a great couple over there. Kess and Steve, you're going to be getting married in about a week, is that right? And who proposed to who? [Laughter] You proposed to her, good man. See, I wonder why he did that? Because it's biblical; for the man, to initiate connection, relationship and pursue with love the woman. Why? To bring her into a covenant relationship with himself.
God has got no casual relationships. He just has what's called covenant, so you either are in covenant with God, through receiving Christ as your saviour and the lover of your soul, or you're not in covenant with Him, you're not connected to Him. If you are in covenant with Christ, which most of us here are, then the issue really is, are you a covenant keeper with God, or are you an adulterer with God? Well, there's only one or two isn't it? We either are covenant keepers, and understand what it means to keep covenant with Him as the groom, or we're an adulterer. There's no in between in it. Think about that. Jesus said in the Book of James, the word of God comes out. He said: you are friends of the world, you are adulterers, and you find yourself in hostility with the one who covenanted with you to love you.
See the relationship God has with us, He is a jealous lover. Now I don't know with you, but there was a time when I was going through a very difficult stage in my relationship with Joy at university, and she broke off with me, and she started to date someone in the same class. [Laughter] I won't spend much time describing how I felt. [Laughter] But I do understand jealous lover! [Laughter] And all the feelings that go with jealousy over someone! A jealous lover, so the Bible portrays Jesus as jealous. He's jealous over you. Paul writes of it in 2 Corinthians 11. He says: oh, I've espoused you. I've engaged you to Him, and I'm jealous over you. I want you to be in intimacy with Him, and faithful to Him, and in love with Him, and walk with Him, and have a covenant with Him, and represent Him as husband and wife in the earth. So the church is called the bride of Christ, and we become the bride of Christ by entering covenant, and by keeping covenant.