Chapter
9 : Utterly Loved
“
Gods loved us so much that he gave his one and only Son ”
(John
3:16)
Let's
carry on thinking about our own personal security. In this chapter
I would like to continue sharing something of my own personal pilgrimage
which will now involve some of the truths from Scripture.
9.1
Commitment Course Failure
Introduced
to 'Commitment'
A number of years ago we found ourselves being befriended by
a larger, well known church that was making waves in terms of growth
and discipleship. At the heart of their activity was a “commitment
course” which taught basics of what they believed and required of all
those who met with them. It seemed a good approach to give the
people of God purpose and direction. My wife and I went through their
commitment course and we learned the ropes.
Now I never just take on board other people's materials as they
stand; I prefer to reflect on it and see if there is yet anything better.
This course seemed rather heavy and long so I researched and
found other places where they had similar courses. I took what
seemed best from these and we produced our own and we took our own people
through it. It was a significant time for us because we were just
branching out as an independent church, free from denominational ties,
so we asked the people to actually sign a form at the end of the Course
that said they were with us!
An
Unreal Situation
It was at this point that God ambushed me! It happened
in the form of one of our ladies who approached me in private and said,
“I really would like to sign but I don't feel I'm committed enough.”
As I spoke with her I found myself thinking, “This is crazy.
Of the rest of the people who have signed up, I'm certain a number of
them have done it just because we've asked them, not because they feel
deeply committed to us. And here is this lady who is one of the
most committed ladies we've got, and she feels she can't sign.
Something is wrong here!”
As we grew we ran that course again but I still felt uneasy about
what we were doing. The theory was right, Jesus did call disciples to
follow him in total abandonment, yet somehow the practice was missing
something.
A
New Approach
For six months I asked the Lord about this and out of that time
came a much more simplified Course called “Receiving your Inheritance”
which we've run ever since, for new people joining the church.
This course is simple, very simple, and it majors on some of the very
basics of being a Christian. Over the years we've had a number
of people coming to us, some times new Christians, sometimes Christians
from elsewhere. For one period in our history we found ourselves
receiving people from damaged church-split situations, a number of whom
had been leaders.
One couple came to us with their family in the most devastated
condition I've ever seen. They had led a church where a spirit
of bitterness and dissension had crept in, resulting eventually in this
couple having to completely shut down the church. When they came
to us they were so hurt and damaged they were actually on the verge
of giving up their faith. Initially it was only their children
that kept them with us, but the Lord was on their case.
A strange thing started happening; virtually every week someone
would have a prophetic word for the wife. Often it would come from an
outside guest speaker. Whenever it came to a time of ministry it was
as if the man of God would focus on her and say, “I've got a word for
you”. It eventually became a laughing matter, and gradually the love
of God melted, soothed and healed up two broken hearts. They came
on the Inheritance Course and heard the good news. There was another
way.
Another couple, again ex-leaders of another church where
it had gone wrong, came on the Course and at the end of it the wife
confided in me, “Well when we came here we heard you were very strong
on teaching and we've done this sort of thing before and so we expected
pages and pages of notes, but all you've done is given us a few verses
each evening, and it's so wonderful. Isn't God good!”
Another couple came and at the end of the Course said, “Is that
it? Is that all we have to go through? Do we have to sign
anything? Surely there must be more than this?” My reply
was this: “No, this is it. You now KNOW God loves you and you
know our heart towards you. If this hasn't touched you we aren't
the church for you. No, you don't have to sign anything to prove
you're with us because, if you're left feeling that this is the
best thing since sliced bread then it's a case of we won't be able to
keep you away from us. That's what this church is all about.”
Now I don't want you to have the impression that as a result
of this we've never had problems, never got it wrong, and everyone is
totally happy all of the time. It will never be like that!
We're human beings with a church of human beings, but we are working
on it! So, let's look at some very simple verses from this Course
I've referred to and see if they will bless you.
9.2
An Unconditional Love
God
loved the world so much....
Let's start with the most quoted ‘good-news' verse of the New
Testament, John 3:16, which you may know off by heart.
It tells us that God loved the world so much that He sent His
Son Jesus to us so that whoever believed in Jesus wouldn't die but would
have eternal life instead. Now our problem is that we've heard
that verse so often we now take it for granted. For many of us
it's lost its impact.
What most of us do with this verse is focus on the back half
of it which speaks of our response to the good news and what happens
to us when we do believe. Instead I want you to note the first
half of the verse: “God loved the world so much”. In other words,
God loved the world BEFORE He did anything. Jesus coming was the
expression of God's love. God not only thinks, feels and talks
about love, He does something about it, He can't stop Himself.
Even
before the World began
In fact the Bible tells us that He planned it all even
before He made the world (see Jn 17:24 , Eph 1:4, 2 Tim 1:9, Tit 1;2,
1 Pet 1:20 , Rev 13:18 , Rev 17:8). The apostle John drops a
bombshell when he says quite simply, “God IS love” (1 Jn 4:8,16).
Now, when we want to understand love, we tend to look at
human beings, but that gives us such a limited and variable picture.
When we look at modern human life we may be excused for thinking
that love is something that comes and goes according to the circumstances,
or according to how we feel.
God is LOVE
But actually God's love is nothing like that. In His being,
God is completely unchanging and when the Bible says “God is love” it
means He is always love, He never varies and therefore His love
is never conditional, it CANNOT be conditional because it is an essential
part of His very being. Without it He would cease to be
God.
So why do we have to say all this? Well,
what I've observed over the years is that if you speak to any group
of good Christian people and ask them, “Does God love you?” they will
all, almost without exception, answer, “Yes, of course”.
However, watch a crisis arrive and watch their reactions, watch the
way they act in the crisis. So often it actually says “God has
abandoned me, He's not here for me.”
What we have is a problem of how God shows His love. When
the crisis arrives, we expect God to move in one way and when He doesn't
we say, “Oh well, He can't love me!” Because in our limited viewpoint
we can't see what God is doing, we assume He is doing nothing, or what
He is doing is the wrong thing because it doesn't seem to be helping
me at this moment.
Giving
His Son?
Look, rather than go into great detail at this moment about
how God may be moving in your circumstances, can we just think about
what follows in the verse we are considering. The outworking or
expression of God's love for us was that “He gave His one and only Son”.
Think on that a bit further.
Before coming to earth the Son lived with the Father in heaven
(see Jn 6:33 ,41,51,62) in total harmony. To send His Son to earth
the Father knew that Jesus would have to take on limited human form,
limited in being a baby, limited in spending years growing up, limited
in physical strength, limited in space. That was much to ask this
all-glorious being who shared heaven with Him.
The Father also knew, because they had discussed it before actually
making the world, that the Son would be misunderstood, be rejected,
be violently opposed, be taken and abused, be taken and crucified by
the very human beings They had brought into being. The Father
knew that for a moment the Sin of the world that would be put on the
Son on the Cross would separate the awareness of each other in the two
of them, so that the Son would cry out in his distress, “My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?” In a sense the father had
to completely let go the Son, that is why John said, “he gave …”
All of that the Father knew, and yet was willing
to go through that self-imposed anguish of separation. Why? Because
He is love, because He knew that by giving mankind free will, He was
giving us the possibility (which we would take) of turning away from
Him, that we would become enslaved by that self-centred, godless tendency
called Sin, that we would become guilty, that we would deserve punishment,
that we would need a Saviour who would step into our shoes and take
our punishment.
Love makes choices and God chose this path so that you
could live and not die, so that your time of existence need not be just
the years on earth, very limited years. The love of God
is there for every human being without exception. It is constantly
reaching out, it is unchanging, unconditional, yearning to see men,
women and children turn and receive it.
The
Prodigal's Father
The only thing that is conditional in the equation is whether
we receive that love.
When Jesus told the parable of 'the Prodigal Son'
(Luke 15:11 -), he portrayed a son who abused his father, wished him
dead, took his property, and left him. Such is a picture of the human
race that, in Sin, wishes that God was dead, takes the world for its
own use and turns its back on God. Although that may be
a picture of the human race, the response of the son has to then become
the response of each individual.
Individually we must come to the realisation of our
state, repent and seek God the Father. While away from the
father, the son could not enjoy the fruits of sonship, could not enjoy
the father's love. For yes, Jesus shows us in the story
something of the father's love in its various forms. First he is willing
to let the son go away, knowing what will probably befall him, and there
is an aspect of love called ‘respect' that allows people to be the sovereign
individual that they are, even with their folly!
Then we see the father watching out for the son, seeing
him even when he's still a long way off. We see his heart
reach out to his returning son. It's not full of blame but
of compassion. He knows the son is stupid, he knows what
he's been through, he knows he must have run out of resources, he knows
all these things, and his heart is filled with compassion.
If you've forgotten what ‘compassion' means, it means “pity aroused
by the distress of others, with the desire to help them”, it is a response
of love. The love of this father had never diminished, even when
the son was away.
Finally the love of this father was expressed in very practical
ways. He knew that the son was racked with guilt, covered
in shame and much aware of his failure, but does he refer to all that?
No! Instead he redresses him in clothes fit for his
son, and sets up a banquet to celebrate the son's arrival. He
is not concerned to blame the son, not concerned to correct his thinking,
not concerned to make sure he won't do it again, he's just concerned
to bless him! He is more concerned to reinstate the son
than he is to condemn him for his past folly.
This father, who Jesus obviously means us to understand is his
Father in heaven, is a man of love. His love doesn't come
and go, it is there the whole time. Yes, it is expressed in different
ways (allowing the son to go, waiting for the son to work through his
folly, watching for his return, encouraging his return, celebrating
his return and reassuring him on his return), but it is still the same
unchanging love.
And yes, there are many who will never return, many
who will die refusing the Father's love, but it doesn't stop Him loving
them. Yet the expression of His love will be to respect
the stupid decision they have made to stay away and pass on to Hades,
but He won't be happy about it. If Jesus loved and wept over Jerusalem,
how much more must the Father love and weep over the world.
You
can love and hate at the same time
Yes, the Father is angry about Sin and hates the expressions
of it (e.g. Deut 12:31 , 16:22, Prov 6:16 -19) but He is still love.
Imagine you have a young son (perhaps this is the case).
He is a wonderful young son, and he grows up to be the apple of your
eye. He is intelligent and good to have around.
Your heart is strong for him. Then supposing he falls into
bad company, supposing he starts taking drugs and becomes addicted (and
if you say this could never be, you have an unreal security - speak
to the many good Christian parents for whom something similar has happened!).
What will you feel? There may be some of us
who are more concerned about what others think and we might be thinking,
“What ought I to be feeling, what would the Christian community
think about this?” and if we belong to a legalistic hard hearted community
we'll know who they will blame.
But on the other hand we may not be self-centred
and we may be able to be honest with ourselves. I suspect we would
avidly HATE what he's doing, HATE the lifestyle he's living, and everything
about it would be an anathema to us. Yet underlying that there
would be a deep anguish within for him, for we love him, he's MY son,
my flesh. I've got years of history with him, I remember the childhood
years with such joy that it hurts now in the face of what is happening
at the moment. I had such hopes for him for I saw the potential
that is there. Indeed now if there was anything I could
do to get him out of this slavery I would do it, for my heart is a heart
of love for him, my heart is full of anguish and compassion for him.
Do you see it? Hate and love can exist side by side.
The Father's heart is a heart of love for you, whatever you've
done, however you've failed. What have we been saying throughout
this chapter? Even though you may not understand the circumstances,
even though you may not understand why God doesn't seem to be turning
up with the things you think you need, He still loves you, He's still
all out for you.
9.3
God is for us?
Let's consider another verse we've probably taken for granted.
In Romans 8:31 Paul says, “If God is for us who
can be against us?” Now that is a rhetorical question because
in Paul's argument he's actually saying, “Because God is for us
there's no one else who can be against us” (no one that is who can justifiably
stop us getting God's blessing!).
Now take that phrase there in Scripture: “God is for us”.
Now personalise it: “God is for me.” He's not
against you, He's for you. Again in verse 32 Paul goes on
and says what we read from John - if God gave Jesus to save us, won't
He go the whole way and give us all the other good things He wants to
give His children? In other words, because God the Father
went and gave the one who was closest to Him, the one who was most precious
to Him, and that all to save you from Sin and from death and from Hades,
surely He's not going to hold back now? No, He's for you!
Parents
'for' the child
Let's take some simple examples. Have you ever had a small child
play a part in a school concert or play? If you want THE most
nerve racking experience, go along to a concert where young children
are playing. We're not talking about child prodigies here,
we're talking about a concert with average children performing.
If you have a child playing the piano say, when it's their turn to play
their piece, you are sitting on the edge of your chair rooting for them.
You remember the hours of practice at home, the tears and the
anguish and now you are with them, note by note, as they make their
way, somewhat self-consciously, somewhat hesitantly, through the piece.
When the music draws to a close and the applause dies down, you
are left sitting there like a limp rag. You were for them, you were
willing them to succeed. That was my girl or that was my
boy out there, weren't they good! And then you sit back
and glance around as the next child takes the stand, and you watch and
see if you can spot their parent, sitting there with eyes fixed, knuckles
white, exuding tension. Oh yes, you know what it means to
“be for” your child.
One of our sons is a high jumper and has jumped some big competitions.
I've learned a lot about high jump. It's long and drawn out!
Sometimes it takes them well over an hour to finish the
competition. You suddenly start taking note of the weather.
You weigh up the competition, you look at your son (or maybe for you
it's your daughter) and you gauge how they seem to be. You
watch them pace up and down, doing some stretches. You see
the enforced camaraderie as they chat to one another. Then it starts.
In the first few jumps the beginners get weeded out.
Then it's ‘the big boys' and the tension mounts. Some of them
have professional coaches watching the background; this is serious stuff!
They're down to the last two. You've stopped shouting now,
for it seems like it may be a distraction. They both make their first
jump and both knock the bar down.
The tension mounts. The other young man jumps. He
knocks the bar down. I quietly rejoice. What
am I doing! My son goes to make his run up. I am praying!
What is going on here, it's not that important! He
knocks the bar down. They both have one more jump.
The first lad touches the bar, it quivers but stays there. He's
over! Oh no, the tension is now doubly bad. I am signing
to my son, “Focus you mind, you can do it!” I am one with him.
I can feel what he's feeling. This has got to be it.
He runs, he jumps, my heart stops, and he's over!!!! They're both
still in and we've got to go through all that yet again as the bar is
raised once more. If we are for our children like that,
how much more must our heavenly Father be for us!
We
are 'Precious' to God
Just one more verse before the end of the chapter, Acts
20:28. This is Paul speaking to the Ephesian elders and
he refers to the “church of God which he bought with his own blood.”
What does God feel about his church? Perhaps a number of
things, but one thing in particular.
Think about this. Consider this scenario.
Suppose you're a woman (OK, I know 50% of you are!), a married woman.
You've been trying for a child for ten years, and eventually
you conceive. The pregnancy doesn't go smoothly and in the latter
three months you're in and out of hospital four times. There
is a complication and the child nearly dies at birth. It's a girl
- and you've longed for a girl all those years! Three months into her
life there are worrying signs that something is wrong. The
doctors say she needs heart surgery. It is life and death.
For hours you wait outside the operating theatre. Eventually
she is brought out. The surgeon comes to see you. He looks tired.
“She will be all right”, is all he says, and she is. Tell me,
how would you feel about this little girl of yours as she grows
up? I think you'd feel she was very precious to you.
In the early part of
the 21st century, with the making of the film, "The Lord of the
Rings", the phrase, "My Precious" has taken on a new
meaning. There the master-ring became the focus of the creature, Gollum,
who referred to it as "My Precious". For him there was an
unnatural consuming desire for the ring, and in that sense the word
has been debased.
Let's have another situation. You are middle aged.
You have a lovely family, a good job and a very happy and comfortable
life. Suddenly your life is challenged. You have cancer.
There is an operation which is touch and go. Eventually
there is chemotherapy. Eighteen months later the doctor says, “Well
the best we can say is that there is no sign of it. You are in
remission. It may never return, but on the other hand it might.”
How do you think you're feeling about you life now? Somehow
it has taken on a new value, somehow it seems very precious to you.
Sunsets have become important, the sound of laughter very meaningful.
Your perspective has changed.
So why do we think that God might feel differently about
us? It cost Him the separation from His own wonderful Son to ensure
your release. From before time began He saw the future, saw what
would happen to you, saw that you would be infected with Sin from before
birth, saw you would be in opposition to Him, and yet saw that for the
price of His Son, Jesus, He could buy you back from the jaws of Hades.
As He described Joshua the high priest (Zech 3:2), are
you not a brand snatched from the fire? But you're more than a
stick, you are an adopted son. How much more precious must you
be to God? Really, let that sentence sink in, see the wonder
of it!
9.4
And So?
In this chapter we've simply been meditating on a few wonderful verses
from Scripture, verses we've possibly taken for granted, or even perhaps
never seriously considered before. So, in our closing questions
can we add some simple prayer responses to our answers:
(Jn 3:16) Have you realised that God's love
is unwavering for you because He is unchanging?
•
have you seen His love that has always
been?
•
have you seen the cost to the Father
of sending Jesus?
•
have you seen the cost to the Father
of buying your freedom?
Why not pause before you go on and thank Him for the wonder and
reality of that love and ask His forgiveness that you've ever doubted
it.
(Rom 8:31) Have you realised that God
is totally for you as His child?