The Love of Christ
Transcript
Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab your Bibles. Let's go to Ephesians chapter 3.
So we are back in our Ephesians series. We spent a good bit of time in the fall walking verse by verse through the book of Ephesians. And we are going to spend a good bit of time in the spring doing the exact same thing. So we took a little break for our Give series. We started this year off talking about Jesus is better than everything else. And now we are back in Ephesians.
How familiar are y'all with the pole vault? Moderately, like I'm a pole vault tier. If that's not what they're called, that's what they should be called. Like I'm not that familiar with the pole vault, so I'm going to explain it to y'all. So the pole vault is an athlete, a track athlete, a pole vault tier, dresses up in like a track outfit or looks kind of like a wrestling singlet.
Don't call it a onesie. They get upset. It's a singlet. And they have a big stick. It's a pole is the technical term. And it is bendy, the stick is.
So it's not like a super rigid stick. It's like a long bendy stick. And they run quickly holding their stick as fast as they can. And then there's like a football goal post thing set up here with another stick across it. I don't think that one's as bendy as the one they're holding. It could be the same type of stick.
I don't know. But it's running across here. And the goal is to take this stick, stick it in the ground. That's why it's called that. And then run. It bends.
And then they jump. And they fly through the air holding on to their stick. At some point they let go. And the goal is to get their feet and then the rest of their body over the... I don't know which one's the pole. This is the pole or that's the pole.
Maybe they're both the pole. But maybe they're vaulting with a pole or over a pole. But they've got to get over. Over... This is the vault part. They get over that.
And then on the other side there's like a big... Like a big mat or air mattress. Like the air mattress you sleep on at your grandma's house. But like... Like also like a gym mat. Like if they had a really big baby.
Like that's what's on the other side. And they fall on top of that. And they do a good job if they get over the goal post. That's like... That was like a win. And then they raise it.
And it's like the opposite of the limbo. They keep raising it. And then eventually they hit the stick. And I think everybody laughs. And then it's over with. And so...
That's what Paul's doing in this letter. And we've reached the moment in the letter where he sticks the stick in the ground. That's where we are today. So the fall... We spent him building momentum. We looked at all the theology behind his letter.
So he... In the fall is building up. He's running towards the goal. He's running towards what he's going to eventually vault us into. And so the fall has been him saying in chapter 1 that all this truth about who God is and what he's like and what he's done. And so he's...
He says that we've been blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. That he chose us before... Chose us in him before the foundation of the world. That he predestined us for the adoption of sons. That he loves us. That he redeems us.
That he gives us an inheritance. That he sealed us with the Holy Spirit. And then he kind of says, so... Because that's true, I pray that you would know this. So the back half of chapter 1 is he just saying, I pray that you would know all that he's done for you in Christ.
All of this rich and deep theology, I pray that you would know it. Then he goes into chapter 2 saying... That you've been saved by grace. You didn't earn this. You weren't good. You weren't special.
You weren't holy. You weren't moral. You weren't smarter. He says, you were dead. You were useless. You were trapped in your sin.
And then by grace, Jesus Christ swapped places with you. That he died for you. That you were saved by grace. And then he says, and you've been now saved by grace. Equipped for works. And then he goes into saying, because we've been saved by grace, we actually get to relate to one another.
And so we spent some time talking about racism. Because that's what he begins to address. Is that both Jewish and Gentile believers need to get along and grow together. And then today, the back half of chapter 3, we're going to pick up in verse 14. He says, for this reason. And so he begins this.
He's saying, because of all this stuff back here. For this reason. For all the stuff I've already said. And then at the end of this, he's going to say, amen. And the next verse is going to be, walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. And so what he does is, he takes all of this theology.
All of this dense, rich. I'm going to be careful what I'm saying here. Dense, rich truth about Christ and his work and his goodness for us. And he uses it to build momentum. That's him sprinting. You don't get over that by just sticking it in the ground and trying to build momentum.
Today, he sticks the pole in the ground. And again, I'm not a pole vaulter. Father, I'm assuming where you put the end of that stick matters. I'm assuming that if you do it too soon or too late or at a different wrong angle. I'm assuming that this really matters. That you get it right in the exact spot.
So that with all the momentum that you've built. You can propel yourself towards the work you're supposed to do. And that's what's happening in this letter. That Paul's running full speed with all of this truth. And all this momentum of the truth of the gospel for us in Christ. And his love for us.
And his adoption of us. And his salvation for us. And then today he sticks. That truth. Anchors it. And uses it for the rest of the letter.
He's going to say, now here's how we live that. Here's what we look like to live that. And so today is actually a really important day for us. As we get to see, what is he anchoring in? What was all of that building to put us in? And then the rest of the letter he's going to say, here's how to live.
Here's how to relate to each other. Here's how to love one another. Here's how to get along with one another. And so we're going to pick up verse 14. This is where Paul anchors this to propel us into everything else that we're going to look at. And we'll pray before we read this whole passage together.
God, I pray that you would give us grace today. That as Paul says this prayer and as he transitions this letter from all the true things about you into all the things that we're supposed to do, how we're supposed to respond and live in light of that. God, I pray that you would help us to see this clearly, to feel it deep inside of our hearts, that your Holy Spirit would empower it in us and that you would help us to know your love and walk in a manner worthy of you. In Jesus' name, amen. Chapter 3, starting in verse 14. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.
So he begins by saying, because of all this truth about Jesus and what he's accomplished for us in the gospel, here's what I pray. That's what he means by I bow my knee. I submit myself in prayer to the Father. And then when he says, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, what he means is he's the father of everybody. He's in charge of everybody. There's nobody outside of his scope that he's the God of everything.
I like the movie, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? And throughout that movie, he's going to try to find his family after he escapes from prison. And he keeps saying, I'm the paterfamilias, which means I'm the daddy. I'm the father of this family. Like nobody can replace me. And that's what he's saying here is that God is the paterfamilias.
He's the father of the family of everybody. He's in charge of everybody. And then he says, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. So he's built all of this momentum. And this is where he's sticking his pole in the ground and saying, this is what we land in in order for us to move forward. And so his prayer, his request is, and we're going to highlight this, that he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being.
So he prays, his request, the thing he gets down and asks the father for this church in Ephesus. And as we read this for all Christians, is that the Holy Spirit would strengthen us, strengthen them in their inner being. And this is one of the beautiful things about Christianity, is that you can be weak physically, and you can be weak mentally, and you can have a ferocious spirit. That you can have an inner strength beyond compare, and be built in by the Holy Spirit, with a power and a strength that is unapproachable. And that's what he says, is that I pray that he would strengthen you by the power of his spirit, strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being.
And then he says, so that. And so these words are important when you're reading your Bible, so that. So now he's giving us what will happen if that happens. So he's saying, so that. Yeah, I want him to do this, so that. Here's the result.
Here's what will happen. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. So he's saying, I pray that the Holy Spirit would come in your heart, and give you the ability to contain Christ, to have Christ dwell in you through faith. That you would believe in Christ, that's faith. That you would trust in him, and that he would dwell, live in your heart. And I pray that the Holy Spirit would give you strength to handle that, strength so that this will happen.
That's the result. And so look at the rest of verse 17. It says, That you being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length, and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. And so he says, I pray that you would be strengthened in your heart, so that Christ would dwell in you. And he says, that you, so now we're seeing, he's making another point. And then it says, comma, being rooted and grounded in love.
And so we're going to highlight that. That is, that's just kind of inserted into the sentence. So the sentence is going to keep going here in a second, but that's just inserted in there. And I just want to pause for a second, because Paul just inserts that in the middle of his sentence. So what he's saying is, I pray that he'd give you strength, so that Christ will dwell in your heart.
That you, and he's about to say the reason, but then he just inserts in the middle, now being rooted and grounded in love, it'd be a little bit like, if you had a commanding officer in the military, and he said, okay, you went to boot camp, we trained you, we made you mean, we didn't make you ugly, you were ugly when you came here, but we made you mean. And now, we did that, so that you, and then he just stopped and said, with all the equipment we've given you, can go win the battle. Like he just pauses in the middle. That's not the reason they did it, but he's just saying, with all this. And so I just want to pause, because I think this is a beautiful picture that he gives.
So he says, that you, and he just kind of pauses and says, being rooted and grounded in love. And he gives two pictures here. I want to take a second for us to picture this. And I got really kind of increasingly encouraged as I thought about this. So the first picture is rooted.
That we're rooted in love. So that we would be planted in, and begin to dig roots in, and grow in love. Now, as he's used love in this letter so far, that's the love of God for us. That's our love for God. And that's our love for each other. And other people's love for us.
The church's love for us. And so he means love. Like all the love between the church, between each other. The love between him and you. And so that we would dig roots in love. Now, the reason this encouraged me was, I have before seen a small, we'll say sapling.
A thin tree. And wanted it to not be there. And so I've just grabbed it with my hands, and tried to just pull it out of the ground. Because this weak little tree can't hang with me. And guess what? Yeah, it could.
Because it had a whole lot of roots. I couldn't see. It had been there for, I don't know how long, and it had big roots, that grew into smaller roots, that went and touched everything, and were just, it held on with a strength, that was beyond mine. That I grabbed it, and went to pull it, and I could twist it, and I could get it down, and I could, but I couldn't get it out of the ground. I couldn't just snatch it up. And what's beautiful, is he's saying, that's us, that's the church.
And we've dug roots in, the love of Christ, our love for Christ, our love for each other, their love for us, and it makes it hard for us to move. That we can't be taken down. The other thing, I got encouraged thinking about roots in a tree, was that I had a tree in my backyard, that was crooked, and so I took an axe, and I cut it down. And then, I looked out in my yard one day, and it had sprouted, like 15 little sticks out the top of it, with leaves growing on it. That tree said, you can cut down this one, I'll grow 15 trees. It's like, I'm re-treeing right now.
So here's what he's saying. Life, your circumstances, difficulty, can come through, and mow you down. Where are your roots? And the love that Christ has for you, and the love that you have for Christ, and the love that you have for his church, and the love that church has for you, and guess what? You're coming back. You're not going anywhere.
Life can try to manhandle you, but you have an inner strength, that's beyond what they can see in you, because Christ dwells in your heart, and the Holy Spirit has given you power, and through faith he dwells in you, and you're not going anywhere. The second one he says is grounded, which means have a foundation in, that we would be rooted in love, and then he just gives another picture, that we'd be grounded on it. That's what we'd be built off of. That's where we would anchor in. I remember getting to go, on a mission service trip, to Louisiana, and we were working with a church, that had just been completely devastated, by one of the hurricanes, that came through right around Katrina.
It wasn't Katrina, but one had come through, and just hit this different part of Louisiana, and just wiped it out. And I remember standing with them, on a very flat piece of concrete, and they were telling me, what used to be there. Because there used to be a building, on top of this foundation, and the hurricane said, not anymore. And you know what they were telling me then? Here's what we're about to build here. And they were laying it out, and saying here's what's going to come in here, and they were actually kind of excited, because they were like, we've actually been able to raise some support, so people gave us some money, we're actually going to get to do something, a little different than what this was.
That's what he's saying. Life can just completely, just knock you over, but it can't take away, the love that you're built on. And guess what? We're going to rebuild. That's not his main point here, but it was important enough, for him to just insert it, in the middle of a sentence, and so I wanted us to take a second, just to think about it. It keeps going.
So we're going to take that away, because we're not, so he says, that you may have strength to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth. So can we highlight that? That's not a real complete thought, because he just says, what's the breadth, and length, and height, and depth, and you're going, and then he just says comma, and it confused me for a while, but it's the love of Christ, the next thing he's going to mention. So we're going to highlight that. So he says, I pray, his request is that God would give you strength, in your inner being, so that the result would be, that Christ would dwell in your hearts, and then he says his reason, that you may comprehend, the length, and breadth, and height, and depth, of the love of Christ.
That by Christ dwelling in us, we might begin to see, how massive, how beautiful, how uncomparable, is the love of Christ. Now, this is his point. This is what he was getting at. This is where he drove, his momentum into the ground. The love of Christ. I'm going to read a poem, because I think it helps us begin to see this, imagine a little bit, the length, and breadth, and height, and depth.
It says, Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth, a quill, and every man a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above, would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll, contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky. So he says, if, you filled up the ocean with ink, you turned the sky into paper, you made everything that was pointy, into a writing utensil, and you made every person on earth, fully just devote all of their time to writing, we couldn't write out the love of God. Before we drained the ocean, we wouldn't fill the sky, we would be done. We would not be able to finish the work.
We would run out of sky. We'd run out of ocean. We wouldn't run out of the love of Christ. That you, being rooted, and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth. I love that it says breadth, so that's width, length, and then he says height, and depth. Most things don't have height, and depth, unless they are both above ground, and below ground.
Like they don't usually have height, and depth. Like if you're, if you're looking at a building, and you go, how deep is it? Your friend's going to say, you mean tall? And if you were with them later, and you looked at a swimming pool, and you said, how, what's the height? How tall is it? Your friend's going to say, you mean deep?
And then they're going to think to themselves, I don't need to be your friend anymore. Like you, I either got to help you out, or I got to be done with this. But what he's saying is that God's love has both. That it's in the sky, and it's in the ground, that it's wide, and long, that it's all around. And he's saying, I pray that the Holy Spirit of God, would let Christ dwell in your heart, so that you might comprehend. That this love might start getting into your head.
And you might begin to wrap your mind around it. And, to know, oh, can we take some of that green away? We're going to take some of that green away, so that's just, he may have strength to comprehend, because otherwise, this is going to get way too colorful, and look kind of crazy. So he says, I pray that you may have strength to comprehend. That's the, that's the, the reason he wants us to have Christ in us. And then he says, to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.
That's the, the reason why he wants us to have the strength to comprehend. So he's saying, I want you to begin to wrap your mind around this. And then he says, so that, not just so that we would all go, hmm, yes, I see now. He's saying, no, so that you would know it. So that it would go from your head to your heart, so that it would, that it would become part, you would become intimate with it.
That Christ would dwell in your heart, so that you would comprehend it, and you would know it. That it would become real to you. That you would know the love of Christ, that surpasses knowledge. And I love, that our goal, is to comprehend something, that is incomprehensible. He says, I want you to know, something that surpasses knowledge. I want you to know the unknowable.
That's why he's praying about this, and asking the Holy Spirit to do it. And then he says, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. So that, that you again, is just kind of giving you the transition, it may be filled with all the fullness of God. So he wants us to know the love of Christ, so that all the fullness of God, can be in us. So that we'd be filled with the fullness of God.
Now, sorry, let's show a recap, kind of give us what he just prayed here. His request, that God would, through his riches of his mercy, would grant you to be strengthened. The result would be, that Christ would dwell in our hearts. The reason was, so that we may comprehend, the length and height, and breadth and width, so that we would know the love of Christ, for the reason that we'd be filled with the fullness of God. That's his prayer. So he says, all of this deep, rich theology, he's building all this momentum, and then he says, I want, I get on my face before God, and I pray that you'd begin to see how big his love is, and I pray that you'd begin to know it.
Now, I'm willing to bet, that if we had to guess, if we just at the beginning of this, passed out a little sheet, and said, Paul's big prayer here. Halfway through the letter, his big transition thing, what's he going to pray for us, before he starts telling us how to live, and how to walk, and how to act, and how to treat each other, and how to be married, and how to work, and how to raise kids, and like, he's going to do all of that in the back half of this letter, but before he does that, what's the big thing he wants us to know? What's his big prayer? When he gets to beg God for something, what's he going to beg?
And I don't think all of us would go, oh, to know the love of Christ. Maybe you would, and we're proud of you. I wouldn't. If I just had to guess, I'd have been like, ah, that we would stay far away from sin, that we would do what we're supposed to, that we would look the way, like, that we would be effective for mission, that we'd see people come to know Jesus, and what he says is, no, I pray, I pray, I beg, that you'd begin to see how big his love is, and that you would know it. Now, I'm also willing to bet that most of us go, oh yeah, Jesus loves me. Good.
How much longer is this sermon going to be? Because I got that. I got that Jesus loves me. I want to read a few quotes, because I disagree with you. I think you don't got that. I'm going to read a few quotes, and then I'm going to try to illustrate this, and then we're going to spend the rest of our time trying to get it a little bit.
So he says, I pray that you would know the love, so that you'd have the fullness of Christ, that we'd be full, that we'd be complete, that we'd be whole. 1 John 4.8 says, Perfect love drives out fear. Are we fearful? We anxious? We're plagued by doubt, unsteadiness? Maybe we hadn't comprehended the length and breadth and depth and height of the love of Christ.
A Protestant Puritan pastor says this about the love of Christ. He says, How often has God loved his haters? How often has he loved his mortal enemies with an everlasting love? There is such love and such grace in the heart of God that if you understood the length and breadth and height and depth of it, you would never be discouraged. Are we discouraged? Hard to wake up sometimes?
Hard to do what we're supposed to? Hard to follow? Hard to pray? Maybe we don't know the love of Christ. Augustine, the early church father, says the essence of sin is disordered love. Meaning that we love something too much.
Over and above God that we've gotten our loves out of order. Are we fighting sin? Are we losing? Maybe we don't fully know the love of Christ. Maybe we don't fully grasp it. If we're discouraged and fearful and weak and filled with doubts, maybe we hadn't fully gazed into the length and height and breadth and depth.
Maybe we don't understand it yet. I looked this up because I was trying to think like what's big and what also is something that we might feel like we kind of know. So I looked it up. I went with the ocean. So y'all know the ocean, right?
Familiar with it? Heard about it? Okay. Maybe you've seen it. How much of the ocean and this isn't just the United States, it's not like the World Series where we, you know, we do, we play and then we say we're the champions of the world which is fine. I'm cool with that.
I live in America. It's not like that. This is all of humanity together. How much of the ocean do y'all think is unexplored? Because you've heard that there are parts of the ocean we still haven't explored, right? You've heard that.
You know that stat. Like Bill Nye the science guy probably said it. How much do you think we haven't explored? Okay. Who would say 10%? 10% of the ocean we just don't know anything about.
Who'd say that? Do you mind raising your hand? Can we do that? Can this, can y'all participate? Nobody says 10%? That's too high?
No, you're going to keep our hands up. We're going to keep moving. So it's 10%, at least 10. How about that? Who would say at least 10% we don't know anything about? All right.
Who would say at least 20%? Like we just haven't explored at least 20%. Who would say 30%? Who would say 50%? We just don't, half the ocean we just don't know anything about. 60%?
Some of you are saying, no, we got, we got, okay. Who would say 75%? 75% of the ocean we hadn't seen, we don't know anything about. 85? It's 95. So some of y'all are on track with that.
It's 95% of the ocean hasn't been explored. So people can tell you mermaids don't exist. They don't know. 95% of the ocean. The ocean floor, 99% of the ocean floor. Unexplored.
We haven't even seen it. We don't even know what it looks like. It may not even be there, you guys. At this point, it's a theory. We know about 5% of the ocean, about 1% of the ocean floor. Now, I would have thought more.
I did think more. I looked this up and then I looked it up a couple of times because I was like, that's probably, come on. And now that's what it is. And this is from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is their job, y'all. 5%.
Like we mapped out the moon, what y'all been doing? The ocean is very deep. I don't know if, did I tell you something y'all didn't know? You could stick Mount Everest in it and it would be a mile and a half from the surface at the deepest part. So if you just sunk Mount Everest, mile and a half.
It's 36,000 feet. So if you, if, if, if God took you out over it, the deepest part and then he just removed the water and let you go, you would fall for 136 seconds. And we assume you would hit a floor. We don't really know. 136 seconds, you would just free fall. And we're all going to stand here silently for 136 seconds and picture falling.
No, we're not actually going to do that, but. So here's what, here's what happens. When we say, I know the love of God, like I know it, I got it, I got it. When somebody starts saying, we're going to talk about the love of God, when Paul says, this is my big prayer and we go, let's get to the good stuff in Ephesians. I think it's kind of like being like, yeah, I know everything there is to know about the ocean. I've been to Myrtle Beach.
I think it's kind of like that. Like, you know, some stuff, like, I mean, when you stand on the edge of the sand and you look and you're like, whoa, it's really big. Look, it's as far as you go. Just whoa. And what Paul's saying is, yeah, you've gotten a taste of it. You're rooted and grounded in it.
Yeah, you're not going anywhere because of the love of Christ, but I'm praying that he'll pick you up by the scruff of your neck and just start flying you around. I'm praying that he'll walk to the edges of it. I'm praying that he'll take you and just dip you to the depths of it. I'm praying that he'll get to see the length, the height, the breadth, the depth. I'm praying that through his Holy Spirit, he'll begin to let you see how massive it is. And so let's just assume because of our doubt and our fear and our sin and our discouragement and let's just assume we've got a Myrtle Beach understanding of God's love.
Now, here's what we're going to do with the rest of our time today. We're going to look at a couple of pictures that the Bible gives us of his love. And then we're going to spend time singing about his love. But if we're going to know his love, we've got to do what Paul did. We've got to start getting on our face and asking the Holy Spirit to give us the strength to handle it. We've got to have Christ dwelling in our hearts so that we might begin to comprehend.
So we're going to take a shot at it today to know something that is unknowable to hopefully just pique our interest. to as much as you're going to go home and Google our mermaid's real to hopefully have us go do that as well with God's love that we might begin to realize I don't fully know this. So I want to give three quick pictures that the Bible gives and all we're going to do is just talk through some of the pictures the Bible gives. We're going to try to imagine this type of love and then we're just going to say okay, if we know that type of love God has that type of love for us but bigger. That's all we're going to do.
If you know that type of love it's that but bigger. The first one is friend. The God in the Bible calls humans friends. This is crazy because Abraham is friend. John 15, 15 Jesus tells the disciples he says I don't call you servants anymore I call you friends. Psalm 25 says that God treats us like friends that he loves us like friends.
There's a Jesus actually tells his disciples no greater love has a man than this that he lay down his life for his friends. So I just want us to for a second because we can't fully see the height and length and depth of the love of Christ I want us just for a second to picture the love of a friend and what that's like and to think about the fact that God would love you like that. So a good friend enjoys you and you enjoy them. You want to be around each other. You want to talk to each other. You want to know each other.
You want to serve each other. Good friends are the people that you want when everything is terrible it's fine for them to be there. When everything's just falling apart you just walk over the door you open it for them they come in they sit next to you. Good friends are the people that you want there when everything is great. You want to celebrate with that you want to walk through life with. As I was thinking about this when I was in college there was a couple of us were friends and we lived near each other in a dorm room there was a guy that used to come by and just bust up in our rooms because we always had our doors open and he would he would overstay his welcome.
Granted his welcome was relatively short so it wasn't hard for him to overstay it. I'd like to think I've grown some since then but we just didn't like this cap. Hopefully it would be more gracious now but I'm just telling you about I'm just a story you guys about a thing in the past. Actually I probably I would just I would know I had to be more gracious now. Is that fair? Like I might not actually feel more gracious but I would be like no Jesus help me.
At this point we were just like we ain't trying to so what we started to do was lock our doors and you would just hear boom and he would just smack his head into the thing and you just kind of knew okay and so then he learned to start knocking but we also we would knock on each other's doors or whatever but it just got to where like you know knocking doesn't always work because it could still be him when you open the door so we just came up with a secret knock. Matt Freeman still knocks on my door this way when he shows up at my house. Like you'll hear a knock at your house and I don't know if y'all are like me you're like why is this in my house? Like why is there a person here?
Because we don't visit each other anymore. Every time I'm knocking on one of my neighbor's doors they come to the door like what? Like they're ready to fight me or whatever. if they come at all sometimes you just hear noise and you're like they're not coming. He'll knock on the door and I'll hear the knock and I'll be like hey Matt's here. Like I just why are you busting up at my house? But it's fine.
I know who it is. And I just got to think about the fact that if God loves us that's my love for a friend. You guys it's not great. But if God loves us even just like that that he wants to see you wants to spend time with you wants to be around you enjoys you looks forward to it goes out of his way to be around you when he doesn't have to. That's the thing about friends. You don't have to be around them.
That's a love we know and his love is unknowable. Myrtle Beach Ocean of God's love so that everything that is true about true friendship and true love within friendship is true about God's love for you. So every good and true thing you can think about about love for a friend is true about God's love for you in Christ. The second picture that is given to us throughout the Bible and given to us often is the image of a father. The Ephesians begins by saying he adopted us to himself and I love that he says to himself that he actually wanted us to belong to him. Have you ever seen any of those videos online of people being adopted like they finally sign the papers or they give it as a gift and they open it up and the person's like 18 or 17 and they see that they've finally been adopted and they just start weeping?
That's what Christ has done that God the Father has adopted us through Christ. Proverbs 3.12 says that he corrects us like a father. Hebrews is going to say the same thing that he disciplines us because he cares about us. Psalm 103 says that he pities those who fear him like a father does his son. It's cool with as many children being born in our church family when we're hanging out sometimes and you'll hear a cry and everybody listens for a second and then people go not mine because you've learned. you've learned what your kid sounds like and you'll go okay hold on a second guys like this one's me.
You know this one's me. Tomorrow morning at 9.30 my wife will go in for a C-section we'll have our second our second son we're very excited about. Yeah. Woo! Y'all have had to stay up with a kid before you know what's up. You're like woo!
Woo! No but I'm excited tomorrow I'll get to I'll get to meet him. My wife's kind of gotten to know him a little bit more than I have you know because he's been like hanging out with her this whole time and so I'll get to meet him tomorrow and what's cool is I'll get to hold him and he doesn't know it yet but he has no choice I'm on his team. For better or worse I'm on his team and here's what that means and it's what the Bible just said about God as a father is that he disciplines us because he cares about us. You know whose kids I don't discipline? The ones that aren't mine.
Does that make sense? You know the kids I don't discipline? The ones that aren't mine. Like I've never just spanked a child in Walmart that didn't belong to me. I have spanked a child in Walmart but just the one that belonged to me. Like I am bent on making him grow into what he's supposed to grow into and he has no choice I belong to him but guess what?
I'm for him for his discipline for his training for his good and I'm for him against everything else. I remember in high school this is just a picture of what a father can be like. You maybe don't have to be like this as a father. Maybe you can. I'm not trying to say whether or not this is good. I'm just trying to tell you a story.
I get corrected sometimes after the stories I tell so I'm giving a caveat. So I remember in high school my brother had a couple of guys that said they were going to maybe they were going to fight him. This had gotten out that he was going to have a couple of guys fight him. It's possible it was something I had done. That doesn't really affect the story. So they were going to fight him and so he went home he had a block a class and he went home and got a t-ball bat because he just thought me versus three guys t-ball bat will help.
So my dad saw him come home walk in and get a t-ball bat and my dad said hold on hold on what are you doing? And he said well there's a couple guys that might jump me and I thought if there's three of them maybe a t-ball bat would help. My dad went you want me to hide in the back of your truck? That way when they show up I can jump out. My older brother Logan sat there and thought for a second and was like um and I really think he was thinking if I do this by myself there's a chance that we don't all go to the penitentiary but if you're there there's a chance that we all do. So he just said I think I got this one and I was like just let me know if you need help.
And tomorrow I have a son who gets me on his team. And for better or for worse from now on and that's what that's messed up sinful human fatherly love. Some of y'all had terrible fathers and I'm sorry because they were meant to be a small picture and a stand in of what the good glorious father you have is like. But that God says he loves us like a father which means that we belong to him he is for us and he's not going anywhere. That he's for our discipline he's for our health he's for our training and he's against all that would come against us. This is what we read earlier which is if he's for us what can stand against us?
C.S. Lewis has a quote where he says that when it comes to the love of God we don't have a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way. And we don't it's not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate. Nor is it the care of a host that feels responsible for the comfort of his guests. But we have the consuming fire himself the love that made the worlds.
But we have the consuming fire himself the love that made the worlds. And when we picture the best father the most loving the most gracious the kindest and gracious and stern and disciplined with love like when we picture the best father that would go to the ends of the world for his children what we've pictured is a Myrtle Beach version of the love that God has
For us. The third one he gives is husband so he friend father and whatever's true about true fatherly love is also true about God but further and greater and bigger and he says husband it's another picture that the Bible gives it Isaiah 62 5 says as the bridegroom
Rejoices over the bride so shall your God rejoice over you Ephesians 5 which we're going to get to in a little bit says that husbands are to love their wives like Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her so that the story of the Bible is that God has this love and that Christ comes and rescues his bride that he makes
Her spotless and clean and holy that he draws her to himself this is why we love love stories because it all flows downhill from a good and loving God this is why people love a good father and get to see it and it's joy filled and this is why people love a good romance story this is why we love these stories because it comes from him
I was thinking about this morning Sleeping Beauty Sleeping good gosh I was thinking about this this morning Sleeping Beauty the Disney version not the version I said the Disney version is this story of this wickedness that has come over this girl that she's completely helpless and people get mad about this story now that she's helpless and he has to come
Rescue her but this is our story we're Sleeping Beauty we're helpless that's what Ephesians chapter 2 said that we were dead in our trespasses and sins that we had nothing we could offer that we were helpless and then what happens in the story is this guy Prince Charming his name's Prince Philip rides in he has the sword of truth and the wickedness that was pretty turns into a dragon and he kills her
That's the story of the Bible and then he claims his bride that Jesus Christ rides in with the sword of truth and destroys the dragon and sin and wakes us up from our sleep that would have been dead and claims us the song the song of Solomon stands in the middle of the Bible and throughout years centuries
It has been people have understood it as just a picture of the love that Christ has for the church which I'm going to tell you if you've ever read the Song of Solomon it makes me uncomfortable people now are just saying no it's a really good picture of a husband's love for his wife and it is but most of these theologians will say but secondarily first it is a picture of the love that Christ has for the church and you guys it's like gushy and poetic
And like and I'm bad I'm bad at that kind of stuff like when I want to say something nice to my wife I just go girl I got it that's it I don't have I don't have good words so I have read the Song of Solomon and they use like weird pick up lines so everyone's all text her and be like your teeth are like two sheep that have just come down from the shearing she's like what does that mean I was like
I don't know but it worked for Solomon so the love that Christ has for the church the marriage that he has when he claims his bride and destroys Satan and sin is not a marriage of convenience but it is one enraptured with love that he desires his bride that he longs for his bride that he rejoices in his bride that he celebrates his bride and the most beautiful
Captivating love story we've ever told is Myrtle Beach compared to the love that Christ has for the church the overwhelming overcoming love that he has for his bride so that everything that is true about the love of a husband for a wife in the truest most beautiful sense is true in Christ but exponentially more those are just three small pictures that if you can take the best friend
You've ever had and you can apply the truths of the love that they've shared with you Christ is like that but better if you can take the best father you've ever known God is like that but better his love is greater it's deeper if you can take the greatest husband the greatest love story that you've ever seen that God in Christ is like that but bigger and greater and more and we need
The Holy Spirit in us giving us faith in Christ so that he can dwell in our hearts so that we might begin to comprehend this so that we can know it and here's the thing all of the truth of the gospel has built up to this moment that you might know the love of Christ he wants you engulfed in his love then as Paul says now we get to walk in that but we walk in that as people who are loved people who are cherished people who are cared for
That he delights in us that he desires us that he prefers us that's the love of Christ and I recoil from it because I know I don't deserve it and that's what he said in chapter 2 you don't but he loves you anyway because he's loving and gracious and good not because we were the most beautiful or the most lovely but because he is the most loving and that he rescued and claimed us those are three pictures I want to give us proof the proof is simple
As the Bible tells this story 1 John 3 16 says for we know by this we know love that he laid down his life for us Ephesians 2 4 says but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ that the love that God has for us is known in the cross that that's where we see it that's where we that's where he proves it that when we look and say well how do I know
That he loves us how do I know this is for me we look to the cross I have one more C.S. Lewis quote he says God who needs nothing loves into existence holy unnecessary creatures in order that he may love and perfect them he creates the universe already for seeing he said or should we say seeing because there are no tenses in God so he's not seeing in the future he just sees it because everything exists before God already seeing
The buzzing cloud of flies about the cross the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake the nails driven through the messial nerves the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time for breath's sake hitched up if I may dare the biological image God is a host who deliberately creates his own parasites causes us to be that we may exploit and take advantage
Of him here in his love this is the diagram of love itself the inventor of all loves that when God created humanity he did it so that he might love us and he did it knowing full well the cost to himself to claim his bride that the proof of God's love is in the cross that we might know how loved we are how fully loved we are last two verses as Paul
Ends this section of the text and begins to move into the next part of Ephesians he says now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than we ask or think according to the power at work within us to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever amen so he says now who now to him
Who is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or think to him be all the glory forever and ever and so what we're going to do the way we're going to finish today is we're just going to sing about the love of Christ that we might begin to comprehend it we're going to sing and proclaim and give glory to God that he loves
Us in a way that we don't understand and hopefully in the singing we'll begin to absorb some of this truth so we're going to stand we're going to give glory to God and we're going to sing about this love that's incomprehensible and we're going to ask as we sing and I would encourage you if you are a Christian and if you're not to begin to ask
That the Holy Spirit would empower you to see this that he would give you faith in your heart as Christ would dwell in your heart that you might know this type of love that throws out fear that throws out discouragement that wraps us up that makes us his and that loves us beyond anything we can imagine that our world is so caught up in beautiful love stories and the reason is because we have a beautiful loving God who created the world
That he might share his love with us so y'all stand we're going to sing
