The Person of God No.3 God's Love

This is number 207 in the supplement, coming up on the overheads, All I Once Held Dear, speaks of our confidence in our Lord Jesus, sole object of our total dedication and affection, how He's made sense of our lives. 207 in the supplement, coming up on the overheads, let's stand and sing. All I once held dear in that day, I received from God's desire is to know you more, to be found in you and known as yours, to possess by faith what I could not earn, for to God's in him of righteousness.

Loving you, Jesus, loving you, there is no greater thing. You're my all in all, to know and to know you in your sufferings, to become like you in your death, my Lord, so with you to live and never die. Loving you, Jesus.

Do be seated and turn to Ephesians 3, where the Apostle Paul actually takes up some of the sentences, perhaps expressed more popularly in that song. And he prays likewise for an increasing understanding of the love of God. And by virtue of this, he indicates that the most important thing in life is cultivating knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

One thing that always adds to my mind to the credibility of the Apostle Paul is just thinking through the circumstances in which he was when he wrote the letters. And when he wrote to Ephesus or the Christians in that Greek city of Ephesus, the probability is that he was in jail. And yet, in jail, he, like Richard Wurmbrand some 2,000 years later, claims to have a remarkable experience of God's grace, which supports the notion that our experience of God does not need to be in church or amongst a community of people.

It can be with us wherever we are. So, here's the Apostle in the 14th verse of this third chapter. And he is so conscious of God that he can do the only thing that one can do.

Mark my words carefully. He does the only thing that one can do when you really feel God upon you. For this reason, I kneel.

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. Join me. 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, forever and ever.

Amen. I'll come back to that passage in a little while. But you might like also to turn with me to Luke's Gospel in chapter 15, where our Lord sets up a triplet of stories, and he does so for reasons we'll go into in a moment or two.

Martin Luther, in the quotation that I give to you that I've actually grabbed from Spurgeon, makes some very alarming comment in regard to knowing God. Spurgeon then backing Luther in the quote at the beginning of Notes and News, Rest assured that there is no meeting with God on our part except through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. I am of Luther's mind when he said, I will have nothing to do with an absolute God.

God out of Christ. I think that should be outside. God outside of Christ is a terror to us.

We're looking at the person of God, and the reason why we're engaged in this little series is it was triggered not by any calculation on my part, but rather spontaneously as a result of the little group of addresses I brought to you from Habakkuk, where we had the concept of Habakkuk in the presence of God, reminding God thou art of purer eyes than to behold iniquity and so forth. And having concluded that series, I felt it right to pick up on the person of God. Now I have a problem with evangelicalism in this area, that sometimes we start at the wrong point.

You see, it is true to say that God is love. It is true to say that God forgives. But it's not true to say that God is love in a sentimental, can-be-floss fashion.

There is substance to His love, and love is not the only attribute that there is of God. And this business, let me quote a French philosopher, and put it in English to you. A French philosopher once said, It is God's job to forgive.

Let Him get on with it. Now, I understand what he was trying to say, but it's a cartoon presentation of what the Bible teaches. God is a forgiving God.

God is a God of love. But when you come to deal with, not that you can entirely, of course you're just at the beginning of knowledge, but when you come to study the person of God, you have to do a Moses. I mean by that you've got to take the shoes from off your feet.

You've got to recognize that you're on holy ground. And you can't just come in on one aspect of biblical teaching and say, well, that's it. God is a God of love.

It doesn't matter how I behave and so forth. God is a God of forgiveness. He will therefore automatically forgive me.

You see, all these things, if you put them together just casually with a sort of scissor and paste approach to the Bible, will distort what it has to say. God is a God of holiness. He is a God of love.

He is a God of forgiveness. He is a God of joy. But he's a multifaceted God.

And you have to take God, so to speak, in all the aspects of his divine personality. And Martin Luther, therefore, will be right in what he says, that I will have nothing to do with an absolute God. If God is just a God of holiness, if God is a God of righteousness, and Luther is an unholy man, Luther is an unrighteous man, then this God is a terror to him, as he will be to you and to me.

If you recognize that God is pure, that God is bound by his holy character to his holy law, then what can this God do with sinners like ourselves but assign us to condemnation? A fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. I was reading, and the comment wasn't terribly theological, but I was reading the reaction of one of the chief filmmakers in the United Kingdom to the Old Testament, and he said that the God of the Old Testament, he had nothing really to say in terms of an attraction to him, but the God of the New Testament was fine. Now, I know what he was about, but he's wrong.

He was suggesting that in the Old Testament you get the judgment of God coming out, and you do, of course. I mean, he judges Israel. We saw that in the series on the Habakkuk.

Israel is removed from the Promised Land. It doesn't matter that they've got the blood of Abraham flowing through their veins. You're not saved because of nationalism, not even if you're a Jew.

When you move into the New Testament, of course, you get the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and his forgiveness, and some people seem to think that the New Testament and the Old Testament are contradicting one another. They're not. In the Old Testament, too, there's the indication of the love of God and the forgiveness of God, but it's made much more plain in the New Testament.

The Old Testament is like, if you please, the negative of a picture. The New Testament, the picture is developed in all its fullness. What the Lord Jesus does is, he doesn't contradict the Old Testament.

He fills it out. It's developed in him. In the Lord Jesus, you see, if I dare use the expression, the human face of God.

What is God like? He's a forgiving God. He's a God of compassion, but he's not a God who just deals in a very lighthearted fashion with sin. In the person of the Lord Jesus, you see the consequence of your sin because ultimately, Jesus becomes sin for you.

Now, here's a question. Why did Jesus die? Oh, well, you're good card-carrying evangelicals, and you know your old hymns. He died that we might be forgiven.

He died to make us good, that we might go at last to heaven, saved by his precious blood. There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in.

All right, I've got no criticism to make of those conclusions of the saving work of Jesus, but that's not the whole of the answer to the question. Why was Jesus nailed to a cross? And the answer is because of his doctrine of God. What he had to say of God could not be stomached by the theologians of his day.

They didn't like it because what Jesus taught was this, that this great God of awe and righteousness was also a God of love who came seeking men and women, who takes the initiative, wanting to help you in the middle of your problems. So here is Jesus in the 15th chapter of Luke's gospel, and he's engaged in a peripatetic ministry. That means to say he's on a journey.

He's moving towards Jerusalem, and Jesus preaches wherever he is as he's walking around the villages and sometimes in the countryside. And he's got a mixed audience. The first verse of the 15th chapter of Luke's gospel sets the scene.

Tax collectors, sinners, the religious people, the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, these men who were employed by the temple authorities in Jerusalem, these Pharisees who you found in every synagogue, in every village, in every town in Judea and Galilee. They didn't like what Jesus was saying. In fact, they didn't so much dislike what he was saying.

That was bad enough, but they didn't like equally or even more what he was doing. What was he doing? This man welcomes sinners and eats with them. You see, this audience, this congregation, they're not a group of saints.

They're basically those who don't go to the synagogue, who don't go to the temple. They're not like the Pharisees. They're not like the scribes, and yet this man who claims to be some mouthpiece of God, he welcomes them and eats with them.

So then, verse 3, Jesus tells them a parable. Actually, he tells them three parables, and these parables are all illustrations of the same point. What point? Well, what is God like? What is the love of God like? This God of the Old Testament, this God whose human face is shown in our Lord Jesus, who is the explanation of God.

The writer to the Hebrews says that Jesus is the exegesis of God. Everything about the Lord Jesus radiates God because he is God. He is the revelation of God in human form to this world.

Now, Lord Jesus, who are you targeting in your ministry? Who is your message, or to whom is your message directed? What is this God like? And Jesus says, well, the God that I represent, the God who I am, is like a shepherd who, when he has ninety-nine sheep safely in the fold and knows that one has gone astray, he leaves the secure and he goes into insecurity to find them. That's sensational. God being like a shepherd.

The language of the Old Testament associating God with a shepherd had dulled in the understanding of the Jews, and shepherds were now amongst the lowest common denominator of people. And looking after sheep, well, that wasn't a job that the Pharisees or the Sadducees would do. What is God like in his love? He's like the shepherd who goes after the sheep.

What is God like? Sensationally, Jesus says, God is like a woman. Now, you chauvinists, it was the Lord Jesus who said that. There is a femininity within the Godhead.

I mean by that, when we talk about God being male, we need to make some qualification. God has a heart that is far more sensitive than the average man's heart. And maybe the femininity or the heart of a woman reflects it more.

But that isn't a sign. What is God like? He's like a woman who has ten silver coins and loses one of them. And she doesn't settle with the nine that are safely in her purse.

She searches and does a spring clean until she discovers the one that's gone astray, that slipped into some crevice in the floor. What is God like? What is the love of God like? Well, it's that love that has an attachment not just to a sheep, not just to a coin, but to a son. A man had two sons, and one went wild and did everything that dad didn't want.

But though he was a prodigal, though he had reneged upon his dad, though he had blotted the family copybook, dad continued to love. That's what God is like. That's what the love of God is like.

The love of God is directed towards someone who has no merit. My favorite hymn from Top Lady, Let not conscience make you linger, nor a fitness-fondly dream. All the fitness he requireth is to feel your need of him.

You see, the sheep. There is no logic whereby you could argue that a man should risk his life for a sheep. Yet the wilderness of Judea was not a comfortable place for those whose priority was safety.

A man even in the 20th century had been lost in that wilderness. One of the great controversial bishops of the Anglican community, James Pike, he died in the wilderness of Judea just two decades ago. That wilderness can be a very dangerous place.

To risk your life for a sheep? Why not settle for nine coins in the purse? After all, to spring clean when it's not spring seems to be a wasted activity. Why not? If your son has caused you a great deal of hardship, let him get on with it. He lived as though you were dead, so let him receive his just rewards.

And in a time of need, leave him to it. You see, the thing about the examples which our Lord Jesus gives as He speaks of the love of God, for this is really what He is illustrating, is that God's love goes against logic. God's love goes against cost.

God's love puts aside merit. Now, many of you here, you're Christian people, and in a moment or two we're going to take some bread and some wine. Would you really, if you had been God, if that doesn't sound so absurd, a proposition to put before you? Would you have saved yourself? Would you have showed love to someone in your condition? And your answer, if you're honest, is probably no.

But this is the love of God. It's directed to those who don't merit it. It's directed to people regardless of the cost.

It's directed to those who will never be able to comprehend the logic of it. You see, here's the Apostle Paul. He loved me.

He gave himself for me. It's interesting, isn't it, how the Apostle, with his great brain, will always come back to his own personal experience of the Lord and the forgiveness of the Lord. I live, yet not I. Christ lives in me.

You see, the last thing you can accuse Paul of is just being a pure theologian. He is that, but he's more than that. So when he kneels before the Father in his prison cell, because the presence of God is so great, and when he has the Ephesians in his mind, he doesn't put them and their spiritual needs aside and concentrate on, Lord, free me from this jail.

Take away these shackles. No, he says, Lord, may they have an understanding at least in some measure of that which is incomprehensible. What is that, Paul? That they might know the love of God, which passes all understanding.

It does, doesn't it? Because here in this triplet of stories, our Lord shows, our Lord uses, not to defend his ministry, but to declare his ministry. He gives you illustrations of something that goes against logic, of people who disregard cost, of the putting aside of merit, and the bestowal of favor for no other reason than the person who engages in an act of salvation or discovery wants to do so. The Pharisees and the teachers of the Lord, they mutter at Jesus, this man, he welcomes sinners, as though he should apologize for that.

I can talk about Rowena for a moment, because she's with the Alpha Course, and she can't tell me off afterwards for mentioning her. But when she was a student, she couldn't cope with the smallness of our hostels in London, London Bible College in those days. We were in very cramped conditions, and she came in from Africa, and it was very difficult for her, being used to the wide open spaces.

And she was able to get some lodgings, some very capacious lodgings, which I was envious of. Rented to her very favorably by a very high class lady. And Rowena enveigled her to go, or maybe she went infrequently, in any case, I can't remember, to All Souls, where my esteemed colleague John Stott was the preacher, and often still is today.

And when this lady, Mr. Freud, came back, she said on one occasion to Rowena, that man preaches as though he's in the Salvation Army. As though we're sinners. I mean, perish the thought that you can be high class and a sinner.

This man, Jesus, he welcomes sinners. You're dead right. He does welcome sinners.

He eats with sinners. He's on the side of sinners. He has come to do for sinners what they can't do for themselves.

He has come to show the human face of God, and to deal with the problem that would ever cause them in the presence of God to be so totally frightened they'd rather rush into hell than stay there. You see, Jesus is the shepherd who goes after the sheep and dies in the wilderness for them. Jesus is the woman who will not be satisfied with nine safe coins in the purse.

He wants to discover the erring, this large coin. Our Lord Jesus speaks of his Father as the one who has a concern for the prodigal and who feels the pain and the anguish of the sin that the prodigal has immersed himself in. And in receiving the prodigal back to himself, will settle the debt as he draws him into his embrace and says, this my son was lost and is found.

He was dead, but he's alive again. This is the forgiveness of God. This is the love of God.

This is the depth of the love of Jesus Christ. So you see the point, how really I didn't have to, but it was logical in speaking to you on the love of God to bring the practical teaching of our Lord Jesus in this triplet of stories to you. What is God's love like? It's like a shepherd who so loves the sheep that he'll risk his life to find the lost one.

What is God's love like? It's like a woman who is so obsessed with a coin that's lost she will spend all her energy in order to find it and having found it, she will be happy. Call the neighbors and throw a party. What is God's love like? It's like a father who, though his son has played fast and loose with him and squandered his wealth, when he sees that lad shuffling towards him up the hill, smelling of the pigs he'll put his arms around him, embrace him, and still refer to him as my son.

You see, that's the incredible thing. So, you can understand the mindset of Paul and the tremendous change that it's gone through. For Paul was a Jew.

At the feet of the Gamaliel, he sat. He was the luminary, the leading theologian, the potential successor of Gamaliel in the seminary in Jerusalem. And Paul, who was steeped in Judaism, comes to a realization of who Jesus is.

And he spends his life, after three years of further tuition by the Holy Spirit he spends his life describing this remarkable theology this remarkable gift of salvation. Why did Jesus Christ die? At the theological level, he died because the Pharisees thought he was a heretic that he was a blasphemer. But our Lord Jesus died because he was God's representative to do for you and for me what we could not do for ourselves.

And the cross was not the end. He's raised in the power of an endless life and he returns to glory, and from glory he gives gifts to his church and among the gifts are the apostles, and the teachers, and the prophets, and the pastors. So, here is the Apostle Paul discharging his apostolic ministry and he gives you a definition of the love of Jesus.

He evaluates it. He tells us, and the word vastness is the only word that you can use to summarize it he tells us of its arithmetical, its geometrical dimensions. I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints to grasp how wide, how wide is the love of Jesus.

Paul was a Jew. The Jews believed that their ancestry back to Abraham was all that they needed but he comes to a realization that the gospel is so wide it's to the Jew and also to the Gentile so wide that when John writes his book of Revelation and tells us of the tremendous vision that he has in heaven that there are a great crowd of people of men and women from every tongue from every tribe from every nation you have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God and they will reign on the earth the width of the love of God it embraces the poor and the rich the wise and the foolish the Jew and the Gentile so the apostle tells us when he's writing to the Colossians that as far as the kingdom is concerned there's no Greek, there's no Jew there's no circumcised, there's no uncircumcised there's no barbarian, no Scythian, no slave, no free but Christ is all and in all this is the love of God it's so embracive it encompasses every national group how wide is the love of our God but not just how wide how long the prophet Jeremiah, speaking of the love of God says that it's from everlasting to everlasting this is an extraordinary thing isn't it that when you meet God you meet him as a loving God who has got all worked out in his economy what is going to happen in the future for instance when you get to Revelation chapter 13 and verse 8 references made to all those who will be saved all inhabitants all whose names have been written in the book of life belonging to the lamb that was slain from the creation of the world in other words the love of God is not just wide it is so long that when you go to the furthest point before the world was before time was God had in mind to direct his salvation towards you if that is mind-blowing you're correct but that's what the apostle Paul concedes about the love of God he tells us that he wants the Ephesians to be filled with a love that surpasses knowledge to know this love that surpasses knowledge so wide so long so deep let me tell you the depth of the love of Jesus we had an old song about the same time as thank you Lord for saving my soul it came in vogue and it says out of the ivory palaces into a world of woe only his great redeeming love made my Saviour go the apostle puts it perhaps more accurately when he says of our Lord Jesus that though he was in the form of God he thought it not robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon himself the form of a servant the form of a slave so that he who is within the womb of Mary is none other than God himself he who is born in the manger is none other than God how low can you be when you're compelled to say the foxes of holes, the birds of nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head how low can you be when bloody perspiration falls from your brow in some olive garden because of the nervous state that you're in how low can you be when they place your blood-stained body on the cross and hoist it high how low, what depths can you go to what further depths than when from your voice comes a cry my God, my God why have you forsaken me or the depths the depths of the love of our God its length its depth its width its height do you know what God's love has done for you? it's elevated you you see, Jesus said or it's said of Jesus in the prologue of John's Gospel to as many as received him to them gave he power to do what? to become the sons of God in other words, he's come to lift you to lift you from where you were from the mire of your sin into the choir of heaven to lift you to heavenly places when he's raised in the power of an endless life when he returns to heaven he sends his spirit his spirit indwells you how did you come to know him? well, you came as a result of the working of his spirit you didn't know but that is the case his spirit quickened you his spirit opened your eyes with divine eyesalve you could see what others could not see and he promises you not only salvation now but eventually the redemption of your body this mortal shall put on immortality I was telling a 91 year old lady on Friday who was in desperate trouble one of our own people that despite the frailty of her body and the understandable problems that she's got in coping with life as it now is the day is not far hence when she'll have a body like his glorious body when all the problems that are associated with old age will be no more for Jesus Christ's love lifts us to the height not only of spiritual experience but spiritual expectancy this is our Lord Jesus this is the love of God this is no candy floss love this is no forgiveness because it's God's job to forgive this is part of your understanding of God this holy God this righteous God who comes to you in love who sends the Lord Jesus into the world so that the consequences of your sin can fall upon Him and you can bask in His love a love directed to you that you never saw you see and with this I begin to bring my remarks to a close you are in the family secret the love of Jesus what it is none but His loved ones know you thought to the beginnings of your salvation that it was your move towards Him but when you read the Bible you came to a realization that it's His move towards you that He chose you you don't understand why but He did He elected you there's an innumerable number of other people He's elected too you can't fathom these things you're in the depths of God's understanding and you and I can only bathe and thank Him but we do that He opened our eyes the love of Jesus what it is you see it we see it we bask in that love five days ago I was with another elderly lady you don't know her and it wasn't even worthy remarkable lady it was the first time I'd met her in her room was a picture of what she had been like some 30 or 40 years ago a beautiful woman a very brave lady being decorated, being honored by royalty because of the aid that she'd given in the Berlin airlift directly after the war but the sands of time have gone through the glass there's no resemblance to the beauty that she had when she was in her forties and earlier years her hair is grey and straight her voice is shrill and sometimes rasping her teeth are old and showing marks of decay when she was just a teenager she fell in love and the boy who loved her was a catholic she was a protestant and because of family convictions the relationship had to stop and they were not able to progress it to marriage or anything else he's now 90 his wife is dead he lives in Manchester and through one of the flukes of circumstances he came to realize that his young childhood sweetheart is in a nursing home on the west coast on the south coast of England and every Saturday or certainly every week this man gets in a train he comes all the way down to this nursing home to see this lady who had been his girlfriend and who he obviously still loves and she can't even remember she can't even remember those early years when they were friends so why does he come? he comes because there is an expression of love that can be released, can be shown even by humans which is unadulterated, which seeks not its own which gives because it wants to give which loves because it wants to love and that only heightened to perfection is the love of God he travels towards us and in our unloveliness he sees something that is lovely with our lack of beauty he sees something that he can make beautiful this is the love directed to this world through our Lord Jesus Christ this is the love that makes Christianity unique this is the love of which Jesus speaks when he talks about the shepherd going after the sheep and the woman searching for the coin and the father waiting for the return of the prodigal and as the apostle bows and kneels before God in his prison cell he thanks him for the love of God and prays that the Ephesians might come to comprehend what is incomprehensible the dimensions, the vastness of this love and to be filled with this love throughout their lives so that other people too will take note of the Church of Jesus Christ this unique organism that takes its life from Jesus, his Son so you see why I brought you to those parables and why I brought you to this table because I wanted the parables and the table to be illustrative both verbally and also practically of the love of God which we have experienced there's a hymn that eloquently sums up far more eloquently than I can express it 386 Jesus the very thought of thee with sweetness fills the breast but sweeter far thy face to see and in thy presence rest sing it and remain seated, we'll take the glasses and I hope that won't disturb your concentration nor of the brothers who receive these trays as we extol once more our Lord Jesus Christ 386 Bernard of Clairvaux's historic hymn Jesus the very thought of thee with sweetness fills the breast but sweeter far thy face to see and in thy presence rest God, Jesus Christ, and your Saviour God