Paul at Prayer No.6 The Love Cube No.1

Our reading this morning is taken from the book of Revelation, chapter 7, starting at verse 9. Revelation 7, verse 9, to the end of the chapter. After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude, that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes, and were holding palm branches in their hands, and they cried out in a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.

All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying, Amen, praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever, Amen. Then one of the elders asked me, These in white robes, who are they and where do they come from? I answered, Sir, you know, and he said, These are they who have come out of the great tribulation.

They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them.

Never again will they hunger. Never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat.

For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd. He will lead them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Amen.

And he will aid to visually get across the geometric nature, if you please, of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. He speaks in terms of its width and its length, its height and its depth. And he is there, you recall, I remind you, and just set the scene for those who are present for the first time this Sunday evening, this Sunday morning at the tab.

You remember how the apostle is there in his cell in Rome. He is prostrate before the Father. He is not concerned about the chains that couple him to the God who is looking on.

He is not concerned about his own limitations, not at all. His mind goes across the miles to those dear Ephesian Christians. And he starts to pray.

And what he has to pray leads up to this tremendous climax that they might know the love of God as manifested in Jesus. Now for that ever to become a reality, there are certain subsidiary, certain secondary things that Paul has to pray. He is not so bothered about their physical well-being, nor their material prosperity.

But what is axiomatic, what is basic to his desire is this, that these people may be strengthened with power in their inner man. He is also concerned that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith. And he has this great concern also that they might be rooted and established in love.

And then he leads into the heart of his prayer that you might have power, not just a few of you, not just a spiritual elite, not just a holy club there in the Ephesian church as opposed to the rest of the members, but that all of you might have power, might be given the aptitude to be able to measure something of the love of Christ. To appreciate music, you have to have an aptitude for music. You remember I brought that to your attention last time I was preaching from this passage.

To appreciate art, you need an aptitude for art. And to appreciate the love of Christ, you've got to have that empowering of the Spirit, so that your love for Him gels into His love for you. And then you start to do what is at the heart of Paul's desire, to measure the love of Christ.

To assess it in a sort of geometrical fashion, to think in terms of its length and its breadth, to think in terms of its height and its depth. And as you see Paul as he's prostrate before the Father praying for the Ephesians that this might be their experience, there's also a loving smile upon his face because he knows that what he's saying is impossible to fully realize. It's like giving a child a six-inch rule and sending him to Nepal and saying, go and measure the Everest.

There's nothing wrong with the child, there's nothing wrong with the six-inch rule, it's just a task, it's too enormous. But even as, let's imagine the absurdity of my picture for a little longer, even as the child starts to measure, as he looks up, he has the grand glimpse of this King of the Himalayas, Everest itself. And if he's a sensitive child and has a love for nature, he'll never quite be the same again.

Now that's what Paul is referring to as he's prostrate before the Father. Lord, let them start to measure something of the love of Christ. Let them start to comprehend what is incomprehensible, to fathom what is unfathomable.

And as they delve deeper and deeper into a realization of this love, may there be such an overwhelming experience of your presence that they become increasingly full. With all the fullness of God, these Ephesian Christians were privileged people. To them had been known, verse 10, the manifold wisdom of God.

Not everyone had had this secret disclosed, and the same obtains today. Christian people are a privileged people. You understand in part something of the mystery of redemption.

You've been to Calvary and you've seen there the cross and you've started to survey it. And it brings into your mind and into your heart such wonderful thoughts and feelings. But you're a privileged group of people because a vast majority in Worthing don't have this ability.

They haven't had this privilege. And it's us together, pastors, elders, deacons, leaders, and people. No real distinctions within the body of Christ that are terribly important and perpetually divisive.

All of us together have the privilege of starting to assess this love of Jesus, to measure it. The love of Jesus, what it is, none but his loved ones know. Not everyone's in the secret, but you are and I am.

And so here is this love cube and we're going to start to turn it around slowly, realizing that the very task in front of us almost makes us fools because we're like the child with the six inch rule, having a go at Everest. But at least we'll tackle in part what the Apostle invites us so to do as he's praying that the Ephesians might engage in this practice. Let's speak for a moment, shall we, about the breadth of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 18, that you may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide. What is the breadth of this love? Well, the word indicates what is embracing. The span, the latitude, a more colloquial expression at least used in a colloquial fashion today is the mileage.

What is the mileage of the love of Christ? Vaster than the vastest ocean, wider than the widest sea. You didn't blush when I used an illustration from Wind in the Willow some months ago at the tab, neither therefore will you blush when I bring out what I was speaking to the children and reinforce it. That silly little ventriloquist's doll, Orville, when he is caused to say to the one who manipulates him, how much do you love me then? The ventriloquist doesn't answer.

He just widens his arms and the puppet says, that much? I speak with respect. How wide is the love of Jesus? That much. He loves so much that you can never come to a full understanding of its breadth, of its width.

This ever was a historical difficulty for the Jewish people. It wasn't to them a problem to believe that God loved them. Now, why shouldn't he love them? Special people.

But there were already uncomfortable hints in the Old Testament that the latitude of the love of God went beyond the Jews. And even Abraham, the father of the race, is brought face to face with Melchizedek, a priest unto God. Non-Jew, but a priest.

And when our Lord comes on the scene, do you know how I would describe his ministry in terms of other people? Have you come across the word internationalist? Jesus is the supreme internationalist. The first sermon that he ministers when he's at his hometown in Nazareth doesn't have them all standing on their feet applauding. Why not? Because Jesus starts to point out that even in Old Testament days, the love of God breaks through the Jewish barrier.

And he said there were many lepers in Naaman's day, but only that Syrian was healed. There were many widows who were in need of food, but the prophet went to a widow who was not part of the Jewish community. And when Jesus lays down that enchanting teaching of him being the shepherd looking after the flock, he says, all the sheep I have who are not of this fold, the latitude of the love of Christ, so wide, you see.

And it's a problem. It's a problem for the Jews. It's a problem for Peter.

There he is on that flat roof at Joppa. He's given hospitality by his friend Simon. And he's now asleep or awake or asleep.

He's not quite sure. There's a trance. And he sees a blanket lowered from heaven.

And on the blanket are all unclean animals. And a voice comes, Peter, rise and eat. And he says, not so.

It's against the Old Testament law to touch those things. And without going into the interesting details of that narrative in the Acts of the Apostles, you discover that God is using a visual aid to teach Peter that the Gentiles who soon will be knocking on the door of that house have a right to hear the gospel as much as the Jews. There's latitude.

There's breadth. There's width in the love of God. Paul is a great Jewish leader.

A Hebrew of the Hebrews. But you remember, when he comes to a full understanding of the Christian gospel, he has in mind, as he writes to the church at Colossae, that in effect, in Christ there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free. But Christ is all and in all.

There's latitude there, you see. There is no apartheid within the love of Christ. It does not stop when it reaches the black community.

It does not stop when it bursts from the middle class to the lower class, to the working class. The love of Christ knows none of these man-made boundaries, neither ethnic boundaries nor boundaries in terms of materialism. It's as broad, it's as wide as you can possibly comprehend.

And that's why I got Brother John Mill to read earlier this morning from the book of Revelation. He could have read from the 5th as well as from the 7th chapter, because there in the 5th chapter, as in the following, there is a description of the breadth of those who are brought into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels numbering thousands upon thousands and ten thousands times ten thousand.

They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders in a loud voice. They sang, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise and so forth. And then in that 9th verse of the 7th chapter after this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count from every nation, tribe, people and language standing before the throne.

And in front of the Lamb they were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne. You see what John is doing? He's merely defining for you the latitude, the width of the love of God.

Nothing to do with Jewish exclusivism. It bursts the bands of such a narrow concept. And it embraces every child of Adam who is prepared to confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Well, the Apostle tells us when he's writing to or when he's praying for the Ephesians that he wants them to know something of the width, something of the breadth of this love. How wide it is. But it's not just how wide it is that the Apostle is concerned that the Ephesians come to an understanding of, at least in a limited fashion.

He goes beyond that. And he says I want you to know something also about the length of the love of Christ. If breadth indicates span, length must indicate surely timelessness.

Jeremiah 31 verse 3, I have loved you with an everlasting love. We have a hymn that says His love has no limits. There are no boundaries to it whatsoever.

He has always loved. He loves you. He loves me.

And he has always loved us. That is almost an impossible thing to comprehend. And that's why the Apostle makes reference to the great difficulty in grasping the geometry of the love of Christ.

Here is Peter, for example, and he makes reference in the epistle that bears his name to what the Lord Jesus has done on the cross of Calvary. 1 Peter chapter 1 and verse 19. He says that we are saved with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. When did Jesus die? Well, historically you can almost pinpoint with accuracy the specific year. But when the Apostle Peter is working out the consequences of the death of Jesus, he says in one sense it was timeless.

Because the plan for the redemption of the world predates time. You say, I find that difficult to understand. I'm one with you.

I find it almost impossible. But that's what Paul says. The geometry of this love, its width and its length are impossible to accurately assess.

And so when you come into the book of Revelation, we're told once more about our redemption. Here is John in the 13th chapter and in the 8th verse. He speaks of people like ourselves who benefit as a result of the love of Jesus.

All inhabitants of the earth. He speaks in the 8th verse of all whose names have not been written in the book of life, belonging to the lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. He's contrasting those who are saved and those who are not saved.

He says that God has a book. The Lord Jesus Christ has a record of all those who shall be saved. When was that record drawn up? Well, it was anticipated even before the worlds were made.

Your name was written down in the Lamb's book of life, in the salvation register. Now this I find to be absolutely incredible. Here am I, born in the 20th century and yet before time was, God loved me and made provision for my salvation.

How long is the love of Christ? When we speak of length, we always think in terms of the beginning and the end. The start and the finish. We can't get outside this sort of geometry, this mathematical concept.

But says Paul, when I speak of the cube of the love of God, then I use it as a visual aid that you verbally project upon the front of your mind. But even so it has its limitations. When did God start to love? Did he start to love me at Calvary? No, he loved before then.

When will he finish loving me? When Jesus died, when he was raised again, at the end of all things, when he returns? No, he will continue to love me after that. Let's imagine we can take a telescope for a moment and we open the telescope and we direct it to all the centuries that have gone by. We compress the age of the prophets into half an inch, the age of the patriarchs into half an inch and we're looking, we're trying to see the beginnings of the love of God.

And now we go beyond the time when the world was created and we discover that God was still loving then. We go beyond the creation of the angels and the cherubim and the seraphim and all the heavenlies as we understand them as recorded in scripture. We're way back, eons ago.

We're outside the bond of time and there is God in all his grandeur, in all his majesty. Alone and yet not alone. Loved and ever loving.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You look back to the beginning and you find that even at the beginning there is a beginning before that beginning and a beginning before that beginning and so on. You're in a world where human phraseology can never really convey the dimensions that you're laboring in but there's God there in all his power, in all his glory and he's a God of love, of infinite love.

There's never a time when God was not and there's never a time when the love of God was not. That's why Jesus, when he speaks of himself in terms of the great I am, is saying that there was never an occasion when he did not exist. There was never a time when he is not the loving one.

And you take your telescope and now you move it into the future. We've gone beyond Calvary. We've gone beyond the resurrection.

We've gone beyond the 20th century. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of years might yet come. I rather doubt that we will have another hundred years but that's speculation by the by.

We bring into vista all that lies in front. Let's accept for a moment that there's a millennial age. Let's bring on the eternal age.

Let's imagine that somehow and here again you're blowing through concepts that limit the human mind. You've got through the eternal age and you discover there's another eternal age and another eternal age and you find that God is still loving because the love of Christ is broader than the measure of man's mind. He loves and it's an infinite love.

It goes on and on and on and on. And this is the sort of thing that Paul has in mind when he speaks about this love cube. Things future nor things that are now nor all things below or above can make him his purposeful go or sever my soul from his love.

And because you're locked in the dimensions of the love of God you've no need to go out of this place afraid. That love is so wide that within its latitude it made room for you. That love is so long that it will ever embrace you as it has even before you were born into this world.

His forever only his who the Lord and me shall part are with what a rest of bliss. Christ shall fill the longing heart. Heaven and earth shall fade and flee.

Firstborn light in gloom decline. But while God and I shall be I am his and he is mine. Here is this great cube and I'm boxed in it.

I can't really get out and measure its dimensions accurately. I don't have the abilities. I don't have the tools.

I don't have the mind so to do. But what my mind cannot take in my heart can respond to as I am filled with the measure of all the fullness of God. This defies mathematical analysis.

Underneath me all around me is the current of his love. Do you ever feel that? There you are at Calvary. How much do you love me Jesus? That much.

When did it start? Well it never stopped. It was always there. When will it be completed? There will be no completion.

You're locked within infinite dimensions and your security as you move through this world is absolute. Now do you understand why Paul is on his face praying before the Heavenly Father for the Ephesians? Not for their social improvement. Not for their material advantage.

These things will fall away in any case. There is something fundamentally more important. Lord let them begin to see something of the measure of your love.

Let them survey the cross and survey it and survey it and survey it. Let the all-consuming passion of their lives be to know you, the dimensions of the love of Jesus. And the more they want to know, the more they know, the more they will want to know.

And whatever happens to them externally they have something to take them from time and on into eternity. Well that's the love cube. I've turned it twice.

You've seen its width in measure and you've seen something of its length. But next week we look at its height and I'll tell you the phenomena and we'll consider its depth. And I ask you for prayer in doing that because it bursts the boundaries of vocabulary that are mine to be able to describe the depths of Christ's love in a reasonable, realistic fashion.

Let's pray. Jesus, love, precious love, boundless and pure and free. Oh, turn to that love, weary, wandering soul.

Jesus, hide us with thee. And Father, for the measure of that love we thank you and ask that we may go out to enjoy it more and more. In the name of the Saviour, Amen.

You live in the cross, O Lord, and cause beyond me to live. And ground my heart in those feet and those thighs which not can sever. For I am his and he is mine, forever and forever.

I am his and he is mine, forever and forever. For I am his and he is mine, forever and forever. Eternal God, it be but love to love and hate together.

So love to all, to good, to poor, and then to precious forever. I love the friend whose thoughts are low and nigh. So mighty, valid, and close, he loves so well.

God, all my self can sever. Shall I for him, or love for him? No, I am his forever. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Amen.