Abounding In Love

Happy Lord's Day Summit Church at our campus locations around the Triangle.

My name is JD. I'm one of the pastors here at the Summit Church. We are one church that meets in several different locations, but we're one body of people and together right now we are studying Exodus 34. We're in a series called The Name in which we are looking at what it means to come to know the name of God and how to know him through his name.

Today, Exodus 34, if you have a Bible, is where you would want to begin to turn. We are going to look at how love is a part of the essential description of God's name. We're going to ask questions like, how do you know that God loves you? What do you do when you can't feel the love of God? What do you do when you feel like you don't have any love for God in your heart? Has the love of God overwhelmed you? That's the kind of questions we're going to answer or try to at least. So Exodus 34, if you have a Bible, again, take that out and turn there.

All of us know what it's like to have a situation where someone doesn't love us as much as we seem to love them. I was with several of our pastors as you're turning in your Bible. I was at a pastors convention earlier this summer in Columbus, Ohio, and one of the nights was game six, which turned out to be the final game of the NBA finals. And so the pastors that I was with and I thought it'd be great to go watch the game. We're in Ohio. It's probably going to be exciting.

It was actually downright disappointing, not just because of the outcome, but because it was just, I thought it'd be more, you know, people into it. The sports bar, which is pretty famous, was half deserted. So we're in there. We're watching a game. We're eating our wings or whatever, and just kind of engrossed in conversation. I look up and suddenly the bar is now kind of getting filled up, but they're all women in their mid-30s and they all are dressed like they would have been dressed in high school.

And I thought, this is like an odd group to watch a basketball game. And so we go back, eating our wings again, having a conversation. And then I look up, I promise you would more than three minutes later, I look up and the place is now shoulder to shoulder, standing room only, people kind of flowing out the doors, all of them women in their mid-30s who are dressed like they would have been dressed when they were in high school.

I look out the window and you can ask John Muller, our North Carolina campus practice, he was with me. I look out the window and out in the street are 1,500? 1,500 women all in their mid-30s, all dressed like they would have been dressed in high school. And I thought, what is happening right now?

Because we're on the streets of downtown Columbus. So I turned to one of these girls who's standing around, I'm like, what is going on? She's like, oh, the New Kids on the Block concert right down the road just let out this reunion tour and so we're all here to see that. And I'm like, now it makes sense. I went home and told my wife that probably a good 40 percent of those women were convinced when they were in middle school that they were going to marry Donnie from New Kids on the Block. Right? You were going to get all dressed up in your best tube top outfit with your parachute pants and you were going to go stand on the front row with all the other girls and you were going to scream I love you Donnie with all of them but you were going to yell just a little bit louder than everybody else and he was going to turn and you guys were going to lock eyes and in this one kind of moment of enchantment you were going to have and then later in the concert a bouncer was going to bring you a note that said you got the right stuff baby you're the reason why I sing this song and you guys are going to get married and you're going to have cute little kids with floppy hair but it never happened it never happened right because right now you're married to Phil from accounting he's sitting right beside you this morning he is slightly overweight balding drives a minivan it just didn't turn out now you look at some of these girls doing the same thing with Justin Bieber and you tell them it ain't ever going to happen sweetheart and it comes from a slight place of bitterness in your heart because you didn't marry Donnie but that's okay because you're discipling the next generation and part of that is helping them to live on planet earth right you got to shake them to wake them from that bad dream right well you may or may not ever have been a groupie at some point in your life in fact I would some of you look kind of guilty and so like you started like and then you started shaking your head so I know that some of you were but most of us even if you haven't been a groupie know what it's like to love somebody who doesn't love you back or be into somebody that's just not that into you I think for me one of the most mind blowing things in scripture one of the things that's hardest for me to get my mind around is that we see God the almighty God the self-sufficient creator which means that he doesn't need anything theologians call that the aseity of God he doesn't need anything or require anything to be happy he's happy in himself we see that God continually putting himself in that position we find him constantly reaching out to love people who don't love him back when he really has no reason to and I'm going to tell you this weekend that understanding that one thing about God will probably do more to change your life than any other realization you could have in your life I began this series with this statement by A.W. Tozer what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us what comes into your mind when I say God is the most important and most defining thing about you because we tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God you begin to resemble what you worship rather for whether it's for ruin or restoration the most determining fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do but what he in his deep heart conceives of God to be like what you believe about God is the most life defining relationship shaping fact about you if you believe that God is angry and distant then you're going to feel fearful and insecure if you see God as a judgmental tyrant that means you'll become an intolerant bigot but when and if you come to see the steadfast love of God it's going to give you a joy and a fullness and a freedom that will redefine you and all of your relationships that will transform you into being the kind of loving person that you've always wanted to know and that you've always wanted to be y'all our deepest longings are for love aren't they I mean we know that just listen to the songs that we sing and listen to the watch the movies that we put out we want we want love true love that's what our souls want um exodus 34 six and seven Moses asked God if he can see God for who he really is and so God puts him into a cave in a mountain and covers him with his hand and God says this exodus 33 19 we'll back up a little bit there I will make all my goodness God says pass before you and I will proclaim before you my name the Lord that's how I'm going to reveal my glory to you it's my goodness is going to be expressed in a name my holiness chapter 34 verse 5 and the Lord descended then in a cloud and he proclaimed the Lord in Hebrew he used the proper name of God Yahweh literally means I am I am I am a God merciful and gracious slow to anger abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but who will by no means clear the guilty the element that dominates this description of the name of God is love it is presented here in this name like a many-sided diamond so let's walk through because you get several descriptions that all kind of turn the diamond of God's love and show you different dimensions of it merciful and gracious that may at first sound to you like needless redundancy like saying something is redundant and repetitive but merciful and gracious in Hebrew have slightly different shades of meaning merciful comes from the Hebrew word rahum and it is about a feeling of compassion the word translated gracious is wachannun and it comes from the action that you take when you feel rahum rahum is the feeling wachannun is the action God felt his people's pain and then he acted on their behalf he saw us in our pain and he couldn't just sit by the rahum in his heart forced him to take an action he had to do something to deliver us slow to anger his love does not preclude his anger his love makes him slow to it he is angry about sin but he loves us even as much as he hates our sin so he overcomes his anger because he wants to save us y'all it is a perverse and twisted idea to say that God's love precludes his anger because when you really love something or someone it demands that you get angry at certain things it is because I love my kids that I am angry at the things that I see destroying them if I see them for example lie or do something that I know is going to hurt them it makes me angry not in spite of the fact that I love them it makes me angry because I love them people say oh you know the Bible says first John 4 18 that God is love and they use that somehow to conclude that God never gets angry or judges sin he's just a sentimental deity who's just sappy all the time God is angry at sin precisely because he loves us the same writer who wrote first John 4 18 God is love also wrote first John 1 6 God is light and in him is no darkness at all the light of God's presence exposes and drives out darkness God wants us to be filled with light and goodness and love like he is because he loves us his love is a purifying love not being satisfied with only goodness in himself he wants goodness and love in those that he loves it's kind of like the way you love a cancer patient you don't simply rejoice in the fact that you're cancer free because you love them you hate the cancer that is eating away their body and you desire them to be cancer free as well so God's love does not preclude anger at sin but it does make him slow to it because he loves us more than he hates our sin and he would rather rid us of our sin than he would get rid of us because of our sin his love Moses says or his love God reveals is steadfast steadfast means it does not change based on his moods or how worthy or not worthy we are on a given day his love is more of a settled resolve something like what i would feel for my children in fact this is how king David said it psalm 103 as a father has compassion on his compassion by the way rahum as a father has rahum on his children so the lord has rahum on those who fear him there's probably nothing that has taught me more about the love of God than having children there is something about when as a dad i see one of my kids suffer even if the suffering that they're in is their own fault i do not stand above them and say wow it's your own fault you deserve it i might say that at first but when i see them suffer my heart always begins to change and every parent knows this right you look at your kids and it's not rhetoric it's not if i could take the pain from them even it's pain of their own doing and if i could somehow take it into me so that they would be happy and i would suffer i would gladly do it this is how a father feels about his child this is how God feels about you he has this he's wrapped up his emotions in yours Isaiah will probably take it even further Isaiah 49 can a woman forget her nursing child that she would have no compassion on the son or no rahum on the son of her womb have you ever seen a newborn child and their mother i've known a lot of women over the years who we're not baby people at all they didn't like your baby but all of a sudden they have their baby and all of a sudden they become suddenly in tune with this baby and it's like this tenderness and this rahum this mercy begins to come out of them my wife has always been a baby person so um i'm not talking about her but when we did have our first baby um there was a part of her that i mean she used to we like we'd be met at three o'clock at night and you know our first daughter is two or three weeks old and all of a sudden she would sit up in bed like a dog that heard a dog whistle and i don't have any idea what's going on i'm like well you know she's like something carris is something you know it's the slightest whimper and she would just boom she bound out of bed um and she's trying to get up to carris is right she's you know she's half asleep so she's bouncing off the furniture like a pinball um trying to get out of the room and um by the way made a rookie mistake this is for you future dads from uncle jd um about three or four weeks after care i was like i feel like carris has been sleeping through the night now for the last week or two i had been sleeping through the night carris i'm rocking so after that i learned my lesson i'll be like oh yes of course i heard her too but i wanted to give you guys time to bond um as you uh had at night but um a mother with a newborn child of course not they could ever forget them there's something but look what isaiah says yeah even these may forget yet i will never forget you behold i've engraved you on the palms of my hands i have actually made you part of who i am i am more in tune with your pain than the most starry-eyed mother is with their newborn god's nanny cam is always on and he knows when even a single hair falls from your head i know a lot of attentive obsessive mothers i do not know one that can tell you the number of hairs on their child's body and when one single one falls off yet that is how your heavenly father feels about you the depth and the length of god's love revealed in scripture is shocking in fact it is so shocking that god chooses to reveal to it to us through a series of stories rather than a set of propositions because there are some things that really cannot be explained adequately they really have to be sensed and felt so when god begins to describe his love he very quickly goes to illustrating it for you so that you can identify with it and understand what he's talking about let me show you what i mean let's start with the book of jonah and the book of jonah is a place where you're going to see exodus 34 6 and 7 come back up god called a prophet named jonah to go and preach salvation to the nanovites and jonah didn't want to do it if you remember when i walked you through this book of the bible i told you that before we get all self-righteous about jonah and be like well he should have done what god told him we ought to stop and at least consider who the nanovites were and what they had done to israel they were pretty close neighbors of israel and they were some of the cruelest people that we know about in the ancient world not too long ago some archaeologists uncovered an ancient asyrian library and one of the books in that library was a book of records of the conquest of the kings of ninova and some of those conquests would have involved israelites here are some of the actual statements that come from that book that they unearthed um these are real a mountain of heads i erected from his city their youth and their maidens i burnt up in the flames another one said this i cut their throats like lambs i cut off their precious lives as one cuts a string like the many waters of a storm i made the contents of their gullets and their entrails run down upon the wide earth their hands i cut off i flayed him his skin i spread upon the wall of the city i pierced his chin with my dagger through his jaw i passed a rope i put a dog chain upon him and i kept him in a kennel in the city square i tied them up and made them listen to the frozen soundtrack both day and night one of those is not real i'll let you decide which one it is but you can see why jonah doesn't want to plant a church in ninova jonah says i don't want these people to be saved i want them to die so god brings on the whole whale incident that you if you grew up in church you know about eventually jonah relents and he goes and preaches to ninova not because he loves them and he's had a change of heart but because he doesn't want to be whale bait and sure enough they repent so jonah says this chapter 4 verse 1 but it displeased jonah exceedingly and he was angry he said lord is this not what i said i told you this was going to happen when i was still in my country this is why verse 2 i made haste to flee to tarshish for i knew i knew that you were a gracious god a wakanoon god and i knew that you were rahum i knew that you were slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love that's a quote from exodus 34 6 and 7 i knew you would relent from disaster i knew it jonah finds god's love scandalous because god's love reaches out to people that jonah knows are completely unworthy of god's mercy and his love and his forgiveness i remember i explained to you the irony of the book of jonah is that ninova is not some random bad city that god throws in as if to say hey there's a few really bad people i love along with all of you good people ninova is us and the whole point is is that god doesn't love a few good people a few bad people along with the good people god only loves bad people because that's the only kind of people that there are we are ninova and one day you and i will see with clarity the love that god extended to us and how much he had to forgive us and when we actually see that we're going to have a hard time believing it because we think we're jonah in that story but nope we're ninova and you see in that when jonah looked at these people and says they don't deserve forgiveness and love and god says that's how i feel about you i'm going to come as the real jonah and i'm going to die for the real ninovites and jonah you're a ninovite and this is how i love you some things can't be explained they have to be felt and experienced that means if you've ever had the experience of being really betrayed like by a son or a daughter or a parent or neglected by a friend or a spouse but for whatever reason you can't stop loving them and you keep reaching out toward them in that moment you get a glimpse of what god feels and what he has done with you some things can't be explained they have to be experienced and jonah felt that and god said that's who i am let's go to hosea another prophet shortly thereafter hosea was a prophet of god who was given the most unusual assignment in the bible god said to him hosea one two go hosea and marry a prostitute bet you didn't see that one coming hosea and have children with her and this will illustrate how israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the lord and worshiping other gods how would you like to get that job or that calling in seminary you're going to be a pastor and you're going to be a pastor you're going to be a missionary and you're going to lead a denomination and you're going to marry a prostitute enjoy um so hosea is given that assignment because god needs to demonstrate some things about his character so hosea who has to be the most underappreciated man in the bible obeys and he goes and marries a prostitute named gomer it's bad enough she's a prostitute her name is gomer and he doesn't just go through the formalities evidently hosea says that he actually falls in love with her he has kids with her but soon after they marry she cheats on him and eventually she leaves him for a man that is abusive to her and a man that will not even provide for her most basic needs throughout the book hosea pleads with her to come back but she won't do it hosea even gives the man that she is living with now money so that he can take care of her basic needs but she seems willfully to stay blind to the fact that the money that is being used to care for her comes from hosea eventually this man sells her back into the sex slave trade and god tells hosea he comes and appears to him a second times and he says go and buy her back off the auction block you can imagine hosea saying buy her back she humiliated me she has dishonored me she has broken my heart she's in the situation because she messed it up and now you're telling me to go humiliate myself again and buy her back and god says yes chapter 3 verse 1 the lord said to me go again and love this woman who is a serial chronic adulterous even as the lord loves the children of israel which includes you hosea though they turn to other gods hebrew scholars tell us what the scene would have looked like slaves sex slaves in those days were stripped down naked so that the buyers could see what they were getting and there with all these men that are just putting in prices so they can abuse these women and use them for their needs there stands hosea in front of his wife now stripped naked who has cheated on him again and again being bid on by men who are going to mistreat her and finally hosea stands up and raises his hand and says i will top the highest bid i am going to make her mine again god was trying to reveal his nature to hosea he was trying to give hosea a glimpse of his love and he says hosea you and i have given our hearts to people who utterly reject us and we're going to spend our time and our lives and our efforts going after them hosea there's some things i cannot explain to you in proposition you have to feel them and until you experience these things hosea you're never going to understand the depth of my love or how my heart works in fact i think the most remarkable verse in hosea may be the most remarkable verse in the whole old testament is hosea 11 8 god says how can i give you up israel i can't how can i let you go i can't my heart is torn within me in other words god has bound up his happiness in ours he can't be happy until we are happy if you were gomer's friend if you were her girlfriend and she came over to your house and just confided in you and she basically says man i'm leaving my loving husband who's giving me a great home and our wonderful kids i'm leaving it for this guy who mistreats me and abuses me and doesn't even provide for me if you're her friend you're like stop it fool don't do that all right well say she ignores your advice but then she comes back over to your house night after night after night and you have the exact same conversation right at some point you're like we're done i'm not going to have a friendship with somebody that is this hard-hearted and this just won't listen to the most basic advice but if that person if gomer is your beloved daughter or if you're married to her then your heart has become so bound up with hers that her wounds have become your wounds and her happy your happiness is now contingent on her happiness this is how god reveals he feels about his people about you listen god was happy before he made us he didn't need us to be happy he would have been happy after he had he destroyed us after we sinned but god has so voluntarily wrapped up his emotions in our pain that he cannot be happy again until we are happy theologian ji packer says listen this is amazing by his own free voluntary choice god will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again until he has brought every one of his children to heaven by his own free voluntary choice god cannot be happy again till all those that he loves have been brought safely to heaven i told my wife after we had our fourth child i was like you know i don't think i'm ever going to be happy again in life she said why not i said because at some point with four kids one of them always is unhappy it's just the way the odds work out one of them is always unhappy and when they're unhappy then i feel unhappy and so throughout the rest of our lives it's just going to cycle through one of them is going to be unhappy at some point therefore i will never be happy again as long as i'm alive until i'm dead then i can be happy again right because that's how you feel about somebody that you love god says this is how i feel about you in fact listen to this gomer's name in hebrew means completion god's love and happiness cannot be complete any longer until he saves us even if we are the greatest source of pain in his life which we are and even if we brought that pain that we are experiencing onto ourselves so the hymn writer says and can it be and can it be that i should gain an interest in my savior's blood died he for me who caused his pain for me who him to death pursued amazing love how can it be that thou my god should die for me what is amazing is i look at the very things that i use to rebel against god god turned into my salvation donald gray barnhouse an old old preacher you put it like this listen the pursuing love of god is the greatest wonder in the spiritual universe it's not the stars it's not the makeup of the atom it's the greatest wonder is the love of god when we see this love at work through the heart of hosea we wonder is god really like that but he is think about it many years later many years later god would give man the trees of the forest and the iron in the ground he would give them the ability then to form that iron into nails and to fashion those trees into a cross and then he would stretch out his hands upon that tree and allow us to nail him there and in so doing he would take our sins upon himself this is our god and there is nobody else like him by the way hosea comes from two hebrew words that combine to mean god saves amazing love how can it be that thou my god would die for me died he for me who caused his pain for me who him to death pursued is it possible that the very thing that i used to rebel against god the cross was to become the instrument of my salvation amazing love by the way did you notice that both of those are old testament stories can i take a moment to address one of the most confused twisted ideas that people have about the bible they think that there's like two deities in the bible there's an old testament god the father and he's a mean and grumpy deity he's always mad he watches fox news every night he's ready to kill everybody and jesus is like the son who went off to college and he got all these liberal ideas about grace and then he came back to heaven he's like dad come on these people aren't so bad they're creative and funny and the grand canyon is awesome let's try to rescue them right nothing could be further from the truth jesus's greatest stories of wonder about the love of god are always about the love of the father the father that is revealed in the old testament in fact he once told a story maybe his most famous story ever about a dad whose son came to him one day and said dad i hate living here i'm sick of you give me my inheritance and i'm gonna leave and never come back honestly i could not imagine anything more painful in my life than for one of my kids to look at me one day and say dad we have no more use for you we don't want to know you we don't want our kids to know you would you hurry up and die already because then you'll at least be good for something as you leave us some money the son takes this family inheritance and he goes out to the far country and he blows all of it he decimates the family fortune and he destroys the family reputation jewish law by the way said that a son who did much less than that could be killed whenever a son would dishonor the family or if a son ran away from home they would perform a ceremony called the kazza the kazza meant literally the cutting off and it was where they got together they declared the son to be legally dead and from that point on nobody in the family or nobody in the community would ever speak to that person again because he was cut off this father never performed that ceremony in fact jesus said he stood at the gate of his house every day looking off in the distance that the in the direction that his son had gone and then one day jesus said he finally sees his son coming home he's poor he's blown all the money he's worn out he is broken he is hurt and the father doesn't run after him in judgment the father pulls up the skirt of his robe and begins to run now in those days grown men did not run in our day grown men do not run but in those days where in a robe you had to lift up your skirt and expose your knees which to them was like being publicly naked it was something considered shameful but there comes a time when an emotion raccoon so dominates your hearts that you forget about you just it's not that you're thinking about you don't even think about what people are saying about you because you're so overwhelmed with emotion when i see this picture i always think of that iconic video picture of jimmy valvano in 1983 when nc state won the national championship and you see him you've seen the video running around the basketball court like he has lost his mind he doesn't look like a human being he looks like a rabid dog and if you're his pr person you know you're like hey they better cut this out you gotta look dignified jimmy valvano's like i don't care nc state just won the national championship who saw that coming we just won the national championship i don't care what other people say here's this father who's not making a calculator i don't care about my dignity my boy my son is coming home and jesus said this is how the father felt about you the cross was the father running after you the cross was the father exposing himself to scorn and ridicule and pain just so he could get us back and hebrews 12 says he didn't even think about the pain and the ridicule he didn't think about the fact that he was naked on a cross he didn't think about the torture all he was thinking about is i get my children back to first john 3 1 behold what manner of love the father has bestowed on us that we that we would be called the children of god john 3 16 for god so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life you know i'm gonna tell you something the trinity is hard to understand there's a lot of things about it i don't feel like i can explain to you because there's some things i'm not sure i understand fully but i do know this that in christ death on the cross listen the father himself was suffering for our sins because god did not send somebody else to die for our sins he did it himself that's what makes the jehovah's witnesses and the mormon so wrong because god didn't create a lesser being and say oh go die for them god said i will do it myself and we know that the father and the son are one being but at the same time we know that the father and son are separate and that's where it gets confusing and we know that the father loves the son more than anything which makes the sacrifice even more painful because i'm pretty sure that i could give up my life for you more easily than i could give up my son adan's life for you my um my dad used to teach our wanna program when i was in the fourth grade and i remember him telling this story um he reported it is true it might be one of those legends i don't know whatever but um he said the stories of a guy who worked as a switch um on a railroad uh where the back in the old days when they had to manually sort of switch the tracks if a train wanted to go in a different track and so this man who operated the the switch on this bridge um standard day nothing really you know out of the ordinary there's a big passenger train coming down with hundreds of people um high speed barreling down this this track and they're just gonna go down this right track nothing out of the ordinary when all of a sudden this guy gets an emergency message that there's been a bad mistake at the previous station and there's another passenger train that got put on the same track also coming now at about 75 miles an hour also filled with hundreds of people they're no more than two miles apart there's no way they can stop they will collide you have to switch this track immediately so the father looks out to switch this train coming on this one to this track over here when he sees that his seven-year-old son has gotten down into the gears and the machination of this of this track and he knows that if he pulls that lever it's most likely going to crush his son his son can hear him there's no time to react and so he has to make a split-second decision do i crush my son or do i save these hundreds of people's lives and in the last minute he does what he feels like he has to do because of the amount of people on these trains he pulls that lever crushes his son and this train goes by at full speed filled with people on this train who are laughing and eating we're oblivious to the fact that this guy just crushed his son so they could stay alive i remember my dad telling us this story in awana and i remember him doing it with tears in his eyes and i remember me thinking would he do that to me if i was in that i mean i don't know all there is to understand about the trinity but i know that there's something about the fact that god gave up not only himself that god gave his only son that suddenly helps me to see the kind of love that we are talking about that god willfully endured so that you and i could be saved henry now and the book the return of the prodigal son says perhaps the most radical statement that jesus ever made in his life luke 636 be merciful be raccoon the way that your father in heaven has been raccoon to you as i have been to you this is how i want you to be to others so i have three questions for you here they are number one number one do you believe in the steadfast love of the father do you believe in it you see in these stories they're all about you you are nenova that he beyond everybody's comprehension came to forgive first peter says the angels are confused by it they long to look into it they can't understand it they're like god why would you go after these people these people don't deserve to be forgiven these people deserve judgment and they're amazed by it you are nenova you were gomer that he won't that he can't let go like gomer you stood there naked and ashamed and he walked up and bought you back and he clothed you not with your robes of prostitution he put back on his robes of righteousness you are the prodigal son for whom he stands daily on the gates of heaven longing for you to come home for whom he slew not the fatted calf but himself at the cross whom he clothed not with a garment that you had purchased but one that was purchased by his blood and there are times that you cannot feel the love of god listen i'll be honest with you there are many days i cannot feel the love of god and on those days when i cannot feel the love of god i take myself back to these stories and this situation where god declares his love to me in his name and he says i am this is how i am it's how i always will be i do not change and i know that the love that he demonstrated for me in these stories and the love that culminated on the cross that is the declaration of his love for me that's where he proclaimed his name i've told you that probably the greatest demonstration of the love of god happened on the night before jesus died he goes into a garden called gethsemane where he just wants to spend a few moments alone with his father before the greatest trial of his life but the most odd thing begins to happen in luke's telling of the story of gethsemane jesus begins to be terribly afraid the word is horrified it's the same word that we would use if you saw your family massacred in front of your eyes he feels something in the garden there's nobody there driving nails in his hands what's causing that emotion it was so terrifying jesus said he almost died from it jesus did not exaggerate that's not a figure of speech he literally almost died he began to sweat great drops of blood a medical condition that doctors call hema tridosis which is where you're under such emotional strain that the capillaries in your face burst your extremities burst and you literally begin to bleed out of your pores what was it that jesus christ who had cast out demons and raised the dead and walked on water what did he see that terrified him so badly he almost died luke gives you a clue because jesus calls out in the father's name three times in those verses and not a single time is there an answer what's happened is god has already begun to turn his face away from his son jesus goes to experience the radiance and the fellowship of the father that he's known from all eternity and all he's met with is silence the crucifixion began in the garden of gethsemane a long time before the first nail went into jesus's hands now here's the question why did god give jesus that vision there why not wait until the next day when jesus would be on the cross to show him all that why give him a glimpse of it in the beginning that's jonathan edwards question the theologian let me give you his answer it was so we could see jesus go to the cross voluntarily knowing full well what he was about to experience so that his love for us would be put on display even more god wanted us to see jesus see what he was about to go through see it very clearly so that when he walked out of that garden and set his face to the cross we would know he did not do it it did not take him by surprise he knew exactly the price that he was going to pay and he was going to do it because he wanted to purchase you and that means that there are times when i don't sense the love of god i don't feel good it means there are times i look at my circumstances and i don't see well god if you love me why isn't this happening but i know that my soul has found a resting place my soul has found an anchor it has found a place that i can run into and it is the name of god because the name of god was declared to me throughout the bible the name of god was demonstrated for me at the cross and i know that if jesus would not turn his back on me when literally hell itself was squeezing the life of out of him i know that he will not turn his back on me now if you are the kind of person that has to determine god's love based on whether your business is going well and your family's going well and based on how you feel you will be unsettled every day of your life but when you come to understand that it is based on the settled work of calvary that god says i am not i was i am means i don't ever change i am yesterday today and forever then you will find an anchor for your soul that will let you weather any storm because that is the one thing you will be sure of is that god's love has been forever settled and demonstrated i am i always will be and i never change do you believe in his love for you some of you say i believe in his love but it's more like oh god's sentimental and i'm awesome see what's going to happen in your life if something's going to reveal that you're not awesome you're going to suddenly wake up one day and realize you're Nineveh and you're Gomer and then at that point you're not going to have your positive self-image to go back to it's only going to be what god declared on the cross your life's going to fall apart and you need an anchor and that anchor is the finished work of jesus on christ the solid rock i stand all other ground is sinking sand number two have you embraced his love for you have you embraced his love for you we're going to see this more next week but he's not going to force his love on you you got to choose to receive it salvation is a gift it's found in a personal relationship with jesus it's not just believing in him that he's there it's trusting him personally for yourself that's why we say personal relationship with you have you ever received him personally as your savior if you're a believer are you renewing yourself and the reality of this love daily romans 5 paul says the ministry of the holy spirit is to shed abroad god's love in our hearts that word shed abroad that's the king james version's um use of that um shed abroad literally means poured out it's not a little tiny word it's the same word that's used when the holy spirit came at pentecost it's it's a flood it's not this fleet moment of emotion that you have where you get goosebumps when i go on an alliterated role and i start yelling it's not talking about the choir um crescendo or somebody hitting the perfect chord electric guitar like whoa god what's here we're not talking about that foolishness what we're talking about is this understanding that god just pours out his love and there's this sense of intimacy because you know that you belong to god the holy spirit that's that's not a special thing you get every once in a while it's not what happens once a week in church it is to be the daily reality of the believer and the holy spirit gives it to all those people who ask him are you living with the sense of that love listen i promise you if you are not living in the awareness of that love there is no possible way that you feel any connection to god some of you don't love god you don't feel affection to god and what you need is not me standing here yelling at you about you need to love god more you can't your love for god will always be based on the perception of his love and his tenderness toward you um i see this with my kids when i come home in a bad mood and so i you know yell at the kids about six or seven things just right when i walk in the door doesn't happen all the time but you know happens sometimes my kids have already figured out every square inch of our house and they know how they can avoid dad in whatever room he's in they know how to get from one room to other without going through the room they know how to go through the crawl space if that's what they need because they don't want to be in dad's presence because dad is angry because they feel this judgment coming from me well compare that to when i come home and i just i can't wait to see him and i kiss him and i you know they sit up my lap and they tell me oh daddy you wouldn't believe this look what i colored and look what i said over here and look what i blew up and i'm just like oh it's awesome awesome awesome right they just want to be close to me based on their sense of my tenderness toward them if you don't feel the tenderness of the father there's no way you feel close to god that's why by the way those of you who say oh i i get god but i don't really understand the need for jesus there is no way that you feel any connection to god you know why because you only know god as creator and judge and you can never feel close to a god that is only creator and judge it is only when you come to know him as father father who longed for you after you ran away it's when you come to know him as lover lover who kept loving you even when you betrayed him that's how much he loved you he couldn't stop it's when you come to know him as savior that though you were nenova he would redeem you that's when you begin to develop this warmth a feeling of affection for him it is knowing the love of god for you that produces love for god in you here is number three last one have you sensed his love in you for others have you sensed his love in you for others i i often say this but there's just no way to experience the magnitude of raccoon mercy and to be the recipient of of wakanun the grace and just remain the same we always say that those who really believe the gospel who understand it they always become like the gospel why because you can't experience that kind of power and just remain the same selfish self-centered unforgiving stingy person that you've always been that kind of mercy and grace when it impacts you transforms you and you become like that the illustration that i've used with you over this is basically this um i've told you it's like imagine when it was time for the sermon um the bands you know up here the band walks off and screen comes down you know at the campus or whatever right but there's no there's no me i'm not here just awkward silence so five or six minutes everybody at your campus sort of looking around like what's going on right five or six minutes later i come running in busting the door running up on stage like don't leave don't leave don't leave i'm so sorry i'm late you guys would not believe i was on my way over here trying to get here i knew i had to preach i was on 540 um i had a flat tire in my car so i get out to change a flat tire and as i'm taking the tire off one of the lug nuts rolls out in the middle of 540 and so i went to get it and i'm reaching down to pick it up and right as i'm picking it up i hear this horn and i turn and wouldn't you know it there's a tractor trailer semi coming at me at 75 miles an hour man he hits me knocks me 300 yards i guess he didn't see that he hit me because after i landed and skidded for about 20 yards he just ran over me going 75 miles an hour well i guess he felt that because he stopped to figure out what he hit and so he backed up ran over me again i got hit by a tractor trailer going 75 miles an hour and ran over twice man that was inconvenient and i got up and i found the lug nut i finished changing the tire and i drove over here and that's why i'm late your response to me is you're a liar you're a liar because if you got hit by a tractor trailer going 75 miles an hour you'd look different you'd walk different you'd talk different everything about you be different there's no way to be hit by that kind of force and stay just like you were there's no way for you to feel the magnitude of the love and the mercy of god and then be stingy with your money there's no way for you to feel the magnitude of the love of god and then hold bitterness and unforgiveness over somebody else there's no way for you to pursue a self-centered life and have any concept at all of the love that god gave towards you so that's why we always talk about money here it's not because we need an offering it's because i know the trail of where you spend your money shows it shows whether or not you've really been impacted by the grace of god because you cannot receive that kind of mercy and grace and remain self-centered with all that god has given to you that's why i tell you you got to forgive now you're not earning god's forgiveness when you forgive but i understand see you're gomer and god forgave you you're none of a god forgave you if you hold bitterness in your heart how could you have tasted of the grace of god do you tell people about jesus how could you claim to have understood and received that love and grace and then just be silent about it with people that are around you a burning heart filled with a sense of god's love and grace will always find for itself a flaming tongue if you don't talk about jesus it's not that you're bad at evangelism it's that you've had no real deep experience with the love and grace of god because when you have it it will transform why don't you bow your heads bow your heads at all of our campuses those three questions are my questions for you today do you believe in the love of the father maybe right now your circumstances are bad maybe you don't feel good can you just say god i believe i believe i believe because of the cross i believe in your love help my own belief second have you ever received his love for you it's an offer it's a personal offer he makes to you you have to choose to receive it he won't force it on you you say god i'm going where i'm coming back god i'm men of i repent god i'm the prodigal son i come home and i receive the gift of salvation that you offer to me right now as this love thirdly transformed you have you offered your life as a sacrifice to him say god i know my money my time my treasure my talents all that belongs to you we're the whole realm of nature mine that we're a present far too small love so amazing so divine demands my soul my life my all father open our eyes open our eyes