The Dimensions of God's Love
Notes
Transcript
You’ve heard me say many times that God loves you with an everlasting love.
No one challenges me when I say talk about the love of God and that God is love.
But what do we say to people outside the church who ask these questions:
How can a loving God let this pandemic happen? Over three hundred thousand lives were lost just this year because of the virus. Surely a loving and a powerful God could have done something.
The civil unrest that is happening in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. With the outcry against racism, and wounds in America’s past with slavery..why does God allow that. Just the other day I was reading from the book of Leviticus on God’s provisions between slaves and masters. People ask why was there slavery in the Bible and God allowed it?
While the answer clearly that the Bible does not teach that slavery is the ideal situation but there were consequences of the fall of man including slavery that was redeemed by Jesus.
The more we explain the love of God, the less it is understood and the more it is resisted.
No matter how you tell them, a lot of people do not understand the love of God.
It gets frustrating sometimes but there is the truth about..
Spiritual Blindness
Let me ask you a question: How do you explain the concept of color to a man born blind? (engage, blue)
There is a video of a man on Youtube who was born colorblind and he lived 66 years without being able to see the color around him. However, on his birthday, his family surprised him with a pair of special glasses that finally allowed him to see a whole new world filled with color. As soon as he put them on, he couldn't help but burst into tears of joy as he looked at the vivid scenery around him.
When he wore those glasses, it was like he walked into a new dimension.
Understanding the Love of God is Breaking through a New Dimension.
Explaining the love of God to anyone who has not broken through that new dimension is like explaining the concept of color to a man born blind.
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is different from his letters to the other churches. In that the content although it edifies the Ephesian church, there is no reference of a situation or an issue that is specific to this church.
This epistle that we know as a letter to the Ephesians was more like a circular letter that can be read to all the churches at that time.
Praise God because this can well be a letter written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the church of Jesus today. It is a letter that we can even take as written to the local body here at Crosswind.
Paul like the great pastor that he was opened up his heart to the church by saying a personal prayer that he has in behalf of the church..
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
He starts with for this reason…
Before this Paul talked about ..
A Mystery
This mystery is a hidden that was hidden by God in times past but now revealed to the family of God. It is a “sacred secret” that is unknown to those who don’t believe, but is understood and cherished by the people of God.
This mystery is that because of the love of God through Jesus Christ everyone in the world who believes are united into one body the church. Jews and Gentiles are one in Christ!
So Paul starts by saying for this reason, because of this mystery that has now been revealed to you, he prays that..
16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Paul’s Prayer:
That you may be strengthened with power through God’s Spirit.
Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
That you be deeply rooted and grounded in love.
That you comprehend the breadth, length, height and depth of the love of Christ.
That you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
I am going to focus on the 4th prayer, that you may comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ.
Paul prayed that we would see the love of Christ in four dimensions, it is 4-D.
Paul tells us here that the love of God passes knowledge, there may be dimensions of God’s love but they cannot be measured.
Dimensions of God’s Love. Two years ago, I had preached a sermon series on God’s Covenant love… where I showed you the different kinds of the love of God, this time we will look at the...
Dimensions of God’s Love:
Universal love
Pursuing Love
Relational Love
Missional Love
We’ll talk about each one:
God’s Universal Love
This is the dimension of God’s love where most people are. God loves all of mankind. This refers to God’s benevolence to the crown of His creation - man.
verses:
45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
The thing is that people who are still in this dimension when it comes to God’s love don’t have an appreciation of it. Most actually reject the idea.
These people do not have an awareness of this dimension of God’s love. They have to break through this dimension to appreciate God’s love.
2. God’s Pursuing Love
This is the dimension where people have embraced the message of the love of God through the proclamation of the gospel.
verses:
10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
People who operate in this dimension are those who have already been given an opportunity to respond to God’s love. A lot of them actually go to church.
There are those who flatly reject the gospel.
Those who believe that the love of God is transactional, religious people who believe they have to earn their way..
They have an awareness and even an appreciation of God’s universal love.
3. God’s Relational love.
This is the dimension that people enter into when they hear the message of the love of God and they respond by accepting Jesus into their hearts as Lord and Savior.
Verses:
4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
It is relational because you have been born into God’s family:
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
Now they are in the relationship.
The precursor to this is God’s covenant love to Israel.
They have an awareness and even an appreciation of God’s pursuing love. (Prevenient grace, talk about it)
4. God’s Missional love.
This is the dimension of God’s love that people in the family of God enter into when they embrace the desire of God to bring more souls into the family.
The very heart of this is embracing Christ’s Great Commission:
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
You see, God did not stop reaching the rest of the world when the church was founded. He commissioned the early church to take the gospel to the known world.
The Kingdom of God continues to advance.
9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
This is the reason why Jesus has not returned yet, while Jesus waits to return, the world is being given the opportunity to turn to Him and be saved.
God does not want anyone to perish. He wants all people to be saved.
But we know that not everyone will be saved, most people will actually perish because of their unbelief.
So when will this long-suffering of God in delaying the return of Jesus come to an end? Will He just give up?
14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
When the full number of the Gentiles come in to God’s Kingdom by the preaching of the Gospel to all nations.
The time of the end will start.
Then a remnant in Israel will be saved..
This is why we as a church embrace the Great Commission. We are the ambassadors of Christ that in these times that we live in we are the ones God will use to carry out His plan for the preaching of the gospel to all nations and making disciples.
They have an awareness and an appreciation of God’s relational love. Because I experienced the love of God in my life I want to share that love with others.
People who operate in this dimension have embraced The Great Commission.
From our text today:
19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
You experience the fullness of God when You see the love of God in Four Dimensions. The 4-D love of God through Jesus Christ.
You see this in the Apostle Paul, when he wrote these words, he was actually in prison. He was chained with a Roman prison guard, but that was not the worst that he had to go through.
24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
Do you wonder why, a guy like the apostle Paul who had a good career as a leader of the Jews would choose this kind of life. He suffered up to death.
Many believe that Paul was released from imprisonment he was in when he wrote Ephesians. But he was imprisoned again and on his last imprisonment, he was finally beheaded.
We are the church of Jesus, we understand the love of God, we claim to have received Jesus into our hearts as Lord and Savior, but are we ready or are we willing to serve Him to the point of death?
We can if we have broken through the four dimensions of God’s love. When Jesus actually is the one who lives. It is no longer you, but Christ Who has taken over.
20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Mama Maryann’s life verse, we miss her and we continue to honor her memory and legacy.
Can you read it with me?
When we read together there is a tendency to mindlessly read and not really understand..
Let us ask ourselves today can we say “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Jesus who lives in me?”