Paul at Prayer No.7 The Love Cube No.2

Let's read what is taken from the letter of Paul to the Philippians chapter 2, beginning to read at verse 1. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. Being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name that, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Amen. Now let's turn again to Ephesians chapter 3 and the 14th verse. For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom his whole 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 saints, 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. And I suggested to you last time when we were gathering to discuss this passage that here in that 18th verse we are brought face to face with the love cube.

But just for the benefit of friends who are with us on the first occasion, let me explain. The apostle Paul is a prisoner. He is in Rome.

He is praying on behalf of the Christians at Ephesus. In his cell under the vigilant eye of the soldier, he falls on his knees before the Father. And his great concern is that the Ephesian Christians may have the ultimate in spiritual experience, in a word or in a phrase, that they might be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now, that is the very acme of spiritual experience. I wonder how many of us, if any of us, would claim that we have been on that peak, that Everest height, filled with all the fullness of God. Now that's the aim.

That's the goal to which we are working, so that we might be able to say with Paul, different language, but the same principle, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. I'm so full of the person, the fragrance, the character of the blessed Christ. Now there are certain things that the apostle is concerned about to establish this in the experience of the Ephesians.

And one of these great subsidiary prayers that he offers concerns this love cube. He is saying that to be filled with all the fullness of God, one really has to approach what might be described as a geometrical problem. And that is to take some measuring tool and try to assess the dimensions of the love of Christ, that you may have power with all the saints to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.

Now, the apostle, you remember, I suggested last week, knows full well that this is an impossibility. You cannot measure Everest, not with an inadequate instrument, and neither can you measure the love of Christ. It passes knowledge, that dear love of thine, is the words of the authoress in one of the hymns that we sing so often here in the tab.

And yet, though it passes knowledge, that dear lady says, yet I will try and do it. Even though I will not achieve the ultimate, the measuring of the dimensions of the love of Christ, the very exercise is good for me. And that's why Paul here is saying, I know it's impossible, Lord.

I know as I pray on behalf of the Ephesians that they shall come face to face with the dimensions of the love of Christ, that they'll never fully comprehend it, but in the very exercise of trying, they will be incredibly helped, enlivened, and their hearts enlarged. And I ask you this morning, as I've had to ask myself time and time again, do you ever attempt to do this? Do you ever stand back and consider something of the love of Jesus? When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, that's Isaac, what you see, putting the same principle across as that authoress in the hymn I just quoted, it passes knowledge, that dear love of thine, and yet I'll try. I can't survey that cross adequately.

My mind is blocked. I can't take it all in. Man the mighty, God the mighty maker dies for man the creature's sin.

But you see, my friend, as you come back to the cross, as you come back to an attempt to size up the love of Christ, you poise yourself for this greatest, the grandest of all spiritual experiences, being filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. And so though the exercise is such that you'll never fully achieve it, the measuring of the dimensions of the love of Christ, I say, the very attempt has untold benefits. Well, last time we were looking at the width of this love, and I used the word latitude, vastness, to define it, the width of his love, not just to the Jew, is the love of God shown? It's broader than that.

It affects the whole world, Gentile and Jew. It's wide, is the love of God. As to the length, well, you can never get to a before, before the love of God was in existence.

He has loved eternally. And it says of Jesus having loved his own, he loved them to the end. And even then his love continued because the end refers to Calvary, the end of his life.

But was it really the end? Only in one sense, the third day he's raised again in the power of an endless life. And what is almost the first words that fall from the risen lips of Christ are the lips of the risen Christ. Go and tell my disciples and Peter that I want to see them.

I haven't forgotten about Peter. My love for Peter has not been eclipsed by the passing of these last 72 hours. He continues to love.

And if you were to strain the reaches of eternity and peer and peer forward until you're almost at the outreach of eternity, if that is not an absurd expression, you will still find him loving because that's his nature. God is love. And those who dwell in God dwell in love.

Well, all this by way of revision and repetition in some degree, though I've approached it perhaps in a little different fashion. Now let me concern myself with the depth, the width, the length, the height and the depth. But I'm taking the depth just for a moment before the height.

In one sense, all these dimensions advance upon the other. At first stage, I think that I'm mesmerized more by the width until I move to the length. And then when I consider the length, I'm absolutely bowled over by the thought of the eternal duration of the love of God.

But when I consider the depth, then I'm in an area where only fools would try to preach. For the depths of his love defy definition. But let me engage in folly and share some utterly inadequate thoughts.

Depth refers to descent, lowering. And I ask you, have you considered the depths of the love of Christ? The depths of his love. This is the reason why I got Anne to read from Philippians 2, because there you get a great passage, what the theologians call a Christological passage of scripture, filled with teaching about the Lord Jesus.

He who was in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God. There he is basking in the glory of an eon gone by. And yet he stoops, he moves from heaven, he lures himself, he bypasses or he jettisons all the great privileges that are his as the second person of the ever-blessed Trinity.

And he does so that he might tabernacle on earth, that he might be born like you and me. That's what I mean by the depths. What condescension out of the ivory palaces into a world of woe.

You read of the great depths to which our Savior came in the carols that we often sing at Christmas time. We read, for example, in all come all ye faithful, God of God, light of light, lo, he abhors not the virgin's womb, very God, begotten not created. You get it again? When you read that great carol or sing that great carol once in royal David's city.

And what does that second verse say? He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all. And his shelter was a stable and his cradle was a store. You see the depth there he was in heaven, but he comes down to earth.

And how is he treated? Well, not in a very honorable fashion. The depths of his humility, they stare us in the face as we come to consider the implications of these dimensions of the love of Christ. How was he born in the palace of the Caesars? Not a bit.

But can any good thing come out of Nazareth born in the north? Can you imagine it? Sometimes you southerners feel that folk like myself honored to be born in the north of England have sort of missed something because we weren't born down here. I speak relatively humorously, but here there was tension between being born in the north of Galilee over again being born over against being born in southern Palestine. And what was his task? It was the task of an artisan.

Here he is as a carpenter. He's got his plane and it maneuvers across the wood. He makes tools.

He makes furniture. Perhaps he makes yoke for oxen. This, this being who hung the stars in space, who spoke and the very worlds came into existence.

He's now an artisan in Nazareth, if you please, the village carpenter. What humility, the depths. And here are his disciples later on as he embarks upon a public ministry.

And they're engaged in vying with one another. They believe in the kingdom, the visible kingdom of God coming on earth and they want prestige. They want influence.

They want to be the leaders. And James and John, John, steal it over Peter as they come to Jesus and say, Oh, their mother speaks on their behalf. When you come in your kingdom, the right hand of the left hand for my two sons.

And Jesus said, you don't even understand what my kingdom is about. If you're thinking in those terms, he who humbles himself is exalted and he who exalts himself shall be humble. And later on, you remember, it's that same Jesus who takes the apron and puts it around his waist and with a bowl of water, he starts to wash the feet of his quarreling disciples.

What depths, what humility. He who resides in the heavens, the earth is his footstool and yet he sits on a footstool literally and washes the feet of those to whom he gave life, the depths of his humility. But I go further.

What about the depths of the shame of Christ? Here is his love resplendent that he will take the libel and the slander and he will not pay with the same currency, a winebibber, a drunkard, the illegitimate son of Mary and Joseph. And so they poured their scorn and their abuse and the venom got stronger and stronger and more severe as the months rolled by. The depths, does he spit back? Does he sharply answer? No, when he's reviled against, he will not revile.

He will not return the same vocabulary. The depths of his pain. What about the rough arrest? I have been with you in the in the temple area for many a long day.

Why do you come with sticks and staves with the accompaniment of the police force to arrest me in the garden? Why is he dealt so harshly with on the part of the praetorium guard as they push their fists into his face, as they pluck the hair from his from his beard, as they spit upon that lovely brow? The pain, the depths of suffering, the hands which had been extended towards the leper are now exposed on the cross. And can you imagine the pain, the exquisite pain of a nail penetrating the nerves in the centre of your palm? And yet he takes it. The depths of suffering, the thud of the cross as it rams home in the socket.

And as he dies on your behalf, on my behalf, oh, the depths of the riches of the knowledge of God, the past finding out all this that he goes through, that he endures on our behalf, the depths of his loneliness. There he is, that bedraggled figure on the centre cross, bloodstained, who has had an unbroken communion with the Father since the beginning of time and beyond. And now it's it's gone.

It's fractured. There's a socket that's blown, a fuse that's no longer in existence. And the darkness that surrounds the scene is parabolic of the darkness that there is within the personality of the Christ as he cries out, the cry that's bleaker than the blackest darkness.

My God, my God, why? Why have you forsaken me? The depths that none of the ransomed ever knew. How deep were the waters trod, how dark was the night the Lord went through to find the sheep that was lost. You cannot go deeper than those depths.

You may have turned into the tabernacle this morning in a very broken condition and feel that God can never reach and touch you because you're so low, you're so fragmented, you're down, fathoms deep and no one can reach you. I want to say this on the authority of the word of God. You've never gone lower than Jesus went.

You may be down in the mine, but he undermines. His everlasting arms are embracing every man and every woman who cares to call him Lord. And he manifests his love in the depths where sinners alone can be found and will cry out of their need for a touch from the hands of Jesus.

I says Paul, those depths that he plumbed, they were so deep they reached even me, bigoted that I was on that horse moving from Jerusalem to Damascus with murder in my mind. He who could have spoken and with a lightning flash of his anger could have eliminated me from the face of this earth. He reaches out and in the depths of my condition, he meets me.

There never was a hopeless case in the economy of the love of Christ. And this is why you can't plumb the depths yourself, because it goes deeper and deeper and deeper than you can ever realize. From the gutter most to the uttermost, he manifests his love.

Such is the uniqueness, all the deep, deep love of Jesus. There's nothing like it. Now I ask you afresh, do you ever ponder that yourself? Not just here when it's forced upon you to some degree on a Sunday morning, but in the intimacy of your own thought out there, perhaps walking on the hills or down by the seashore.

Do you ever think, Lord, you did that for me? Do you survey his love? In one sense, you must consider the depths before you can fully comprehend the height. And even then my words are in parenthesis for you can't fully comprehend, but at least you can get some notion as what Paul, as to what Paul has in mind when he speaks not only of the width and the length, not only of the depth, but of the height of the love of God. What does height speak of? Elevation, exaltation.

Men rarely volunteer for demotion. If you're demoted, you have a loss of salary, a loss of perks, a loss of influence. And you have to be someone with philanthropic mentality to move from a well-paid job to a lesser paid job.

Men rarely do that. Jesus did it. Thus we looked at the depths to which he sank, so to speak.

But the reverse is also true. That when a man is exalted, when a man is promoted, then he generally forgets. The butler forgets.

Joseph, who languishes in the dungeon when the butler is returned to the house, to the palace of Pharaoh. And here, our Lord Jesus, we are told in the reading that Anne brought to us from Philippians, having humbled himself even to the ignominy of the death of the cross, is exalted. He's raised again in the power of an endless life.

He's taken from planet earth up into the glory, beyond the universe, into the heaven of heavens. And there is given to him a name that is above every name. The highest place that heaven affords is his by sovereign right.

And now, Christ Jesus, what is your remembrance? You who went to the depths and now are exalted beyond all exaltation. Do you suffer from amnesia? Do you forget those that you came on earth to help? And the Bible says no, 10,000 times no. Ephesians 2 verse 6, and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

In order that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. In one sense, though physically we're here on planet earth, if we're Christians, spiritually with him, we're with him in the glory. We're part of the family circle.

There is something of the Lord Jesus Christ in you and in me. We're partakers of his nature, born again. The very Holy Spirit that God the Father gave him without measure indwells our hearts and our lives.

We're children of the King. We're not here on planet earth forever, not in its present form. We have a higher destiny.

And the very inheritance of the Christ, he has made over to us. Yesterday, I had the great privilege that often comes my way of uniting two of our lovely young people in marriage. And as they exchanged their vows, my heart was moved as always it is on these occasions.

The one pledging himself to the other, the other pledging herself to the one, sharing what they have, though perhaps in their case, it's not much of this world's goods. But whatever I have, I give you. And whatever I have, I give you.

And it's the same with the Christ. He's the savior. He's the bride.

He's the bridegroom. And as he speaks to you and me as his bride, so he shares all the glories that are his. Is he exalted? So you shall be exalted.

Is his body changed as a result of the resurrection? So your body shall be changed. Behold, says John, as he scales the heights in the letter that bears his name, it does not appear what we shall be. But when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

This warm, decaying body that many of us carry around is not ours in this condition forever. Our body of vileness, of corruption, to quote Paul in Philippians, shall be made like unto his glorious body. And all this I attribute to the fact that the heights of the love of Christ are implicated in the way that he benefits you and me.

We're not just earthbound. We're bound for heaven. We're children of a king, a king who has a love that is so great that you just cannot measure it.

He has for himself a glorious church and says, Paul, later in Ephesians 5, 27, it will be a church without spot, without wrinkle. All the blemishes, all the imperfections taken away. Now, these are the heights, my friend, on which you and I ought to be living, at which level we ought to be living more often.

I'm going to be speaking about heaven this evening. And it was Bishop Ryle, the godly bishop of the last century, who said that it's a travesty that Christian people don't think often enough about heaven and the heights to which one day they are bound. So our Lord Jesus Christ demonstrates his love towards us.

Let's go through it again. The width, the comprehension of his love, the latitude of it, the length, the height, and the depth. Have you, I wonder, come to a realization more fully of these things as I've been sharing them with you? You can never complete the task of measuring the love of Jesus.

Tertullian, a great Christian of yesteryear, in the early century, said in his Latin tongue, credo queer absurdum est, I believe that which is beyond understanding. And it's true, you know, my friend. How can I take into my mind God contracted to a span, that he should bleed and die for me? I don't understand it.

Why is it that he should extend his love to the British? When you think of some of the things that we have done in our history, why should he not just eliminate us from the face of the world? Why should he be concerned about the Muslim and the Hindu, those who have rejected the gospel, those who have perverted religious principles with which they were born? He does, and he will continue to do so, because his love is beyond comprehension. But here I say, in my final comments, here is an exercise in which you and I ought always to be engaging, trying to measure something of the dimensions of the love of Christ. Because it's when you grasp the width of the love in some measure, and the length, and the depth, and the height, that you are emotionally placed and intellectually prepared to be filled to a measure with all the fullness of God.

And that's not an experience that happens just like that. It's a quest that takes the whole life in searching after, pursuing God, and knowing his love, and knowing it more, and more, and more, and more, until we lose sight of you when we see you, and we see the Christ instead. Gaze upon him, and let his love work out its course in your personality.

Amen. We trust in thee, O Jesus Christ, and in Christ our God. As in Christ is he that loveth, he is our guide with every need of the flesh.

Ever in thy place of love we trust, where such others flee. Christ is of thy God's glory, such shall all thy God's grace be. He who lives on God's deep mercy shall live with thy grace.

For I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from Christ's love. Death can't and life can't, the angels won't and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God's love away. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, or where we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when he died for us.

Amen.