94-103 Christmas Questions – The Question of Love

This sermon is Part 4 of the series "Christmas Questions" by Dr. Chuck F. Betters.

Christmas evokes numerous emotions, and in 1994, the emotions Dr. Betters experienced were not of warm, fuzzy Christmas scenes, but heart-breaking as he faced his second Christmas without his sixteen-year-old son, Mark. In this series, Dr. Betters acknowledges that not everyone loves Christmas or even looks forward to it. Rather than running from Christmas, though, he encourages us to recognize the opportunity to experience even deeper comfort as we recognize the pain of that first Christmas. Dr. Betters opens up a list of five significant questions that people are longing to ask, not only at Christmas, but throughout the uneasiness of living life in this broken world. We will see five influences that shaped the culture of the Christmas story and continue to shape our culture today. Our culture is hungry for someone or something to trust. In this message, Dr. Betters asks, “What about the question of trust, and what does Christmas have to do with it?”

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Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Betters, produced by Mark Ink Ministries. Each In His Grip message is designed to help turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Betters as he preaches today's message.

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Christmas is not only a Christian observance, but it is also a secular observance. It is a holy day and it is a holiday. And for that reason, many of the themes of Christmas and the themes of Scripture seem to get lost within the context of secularism, within the context of our material world. Questions seem to surface around this time of the year concerning the spirit of man, the soul of man. It's been interesting for me recently to note how many articles have been appearing in the newspaper talking about spiritual issues. Some of them have been pretty good. Some of those articles have been speaking directly to the heart of man. It is interesting to me to see newscasts like World News Tonight on ABC dealing with spiritual issues and doing so in a seemingly fair way. It seems to be that during this time of the year, those questions emerge. Now we have been addressing those questions. In fact, there are five questions, and we've been looking at each of those questions in different parts in this series. The first week we were together, we talked about the question of trust. Is there something or someone in whom I can place my trust? We looked at the rationalist theory, and they offer no hope. And the religionist, they offer no hope. Nor do the relativist or the politicist or the hedonist. None of these offer any hope to the question of who can I trust? In whom can I place my trust? Ultimately, we come right back down to what the Word of God teaches us at this time of the year. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him, whoever place their trust in him, will not perish, but have everlasting life. The second question is the question of reality. What is real? What is unreal? We live under many different illusions. Especially during this time of the year, the illusion of idolatry seems to raise its ugly head. And specifically, we looked at three idols that are more obvious during this time of the year than at any other time of the year. The idol of man's great human potential, that spark of deity that they say is in every man, which we know from Scripture is not. The great human potential that says, in man rests the answers. In our own self-centeredness rest the answers. We can solve the problem of war. We can solve the problem of crime. We can solve the problem of social injustice. We can solve the problem of hatred and bigotry. If we just dig down deep inside of ourselves and bow at the idol of great human potential, there we will find the answers. It's just a matter of us getting our collective heads together and making it happen. That's idolatry. That is not the message of the Bible. The second idol is the idol of religion. Religion is man's way of trying to reach God, and our world is flooded with different religions. Especially during this time of the year. Everyone seems to get into the spirit of religion. But Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. It involves God's dealing with man, God's initiative in bringing his son into the world to establish an intimate relationship with lost sinners. The idol of materialism. Certainly going to be very evident this morning in many of our homes, isn't it? We seem to think that we can make up for in just a short period of time what we have lacked in giving our families over the course of the year. We bow at the altars of the credit card and the bank books and the checking accounts. And we bow at the altars of materialism, thinking that somehow or another we can lose ourselves in this whole issue of the Christmas idol of materialism. We talked about the illusion of conformity. That is, in our own personal lives, the question becomes: will we be politically correct or will we be biblically correct? In our church life, will we be a church that is socially relevant and appealing to the masses? Or will we establish here a counterculture, a world of faith that stands in direct opposition to the principles and precepts of the world in which we live? Are we going to be socially relevant, culturally relevant, or are we going to be a church that proclaims the unadulterated message of Jesus Christ, which is indeed a counterculture? And in the conduct of our home life, are our homes going to be modeled after the biblical paradigm of the father as the spiritual leader and the mother as the model of the church, and children in subjection to the authority of their parents. Are we going to have that model or are we going to bow once again and conform ourselves to the image of the family as the feminist propaganda and other propaganda has given it to us? It is interesting, and I honestly don't know who this person is because, as I've told you before, I very rarely will disclose to you information that comes back to us. When we have visitors, we send them a questionnaire. It basically takes every aspect of the service and we rate it. We give them an opportunity to tell us, what did you think of this? and what did you think of that, and what did you think of the other thing? And during that particular message on the question of reality, this visitor, I don't know if it was a man or a woman or a young person or what, because the questionnaire comes back anonymous, which we encourage. This way it gives people freedom to express what they think. And one of the questions we ask on that questionnaire is what would keep you from continuing coming to this church? And we check off a whole bunch of things on there that, well, we don't like the music or we don't like the facilities or distance or whatever. And in this particular one, they checked preaching. And then see reverse. And on the reverse side was a statement. And on the reverse side, what this person said in the context of their worship experience here, and by the way, I respect them for saying this. I wish that they didn't believe what they wrote. But the fact is they do. And of course, it reminds me of that passage in the book of Revelation that says, I wish that you were either hot or cold, but nothing in the middle. I wish that you were either hot or cold, but if you're lukewarm, I'll spew you out of my mouth. And so I respect this person for being on what I would call the side of cold. They said preaching would keep me from coming to this church. And here were the reasons. Number one, I do not believe that the Bible is the only scripture. I don't believe it is the final authority in anybody's life. There are many other different writings. I don't believe that the Christian faith is the only faith. There is truth in all religions, and it's a matter of discovering that eclectic truth. Now I'm kind of paraphrasing. And then thirdly, they said, I don't believe that daycare centers are inherently evil. Which of course I never said they were. But the encouragement of that letter was, you're hitting the mark. You're speaking to the world's agenda. Because you see, that represents in this pulpit, this preaching represents a counterculture to that kind of thinking. May I suggest to you that that visitor to our church, and I say God bless them for writing it, you have revealed to us, you have shown to us exactly why this message is not popular to the masses out there. This message represents a counterculture. We do not believe there are many ways to heaven. We are unique as Christians in saying that there is a narrowness to our gospel. We are unique in saying that this book represents the final authority in our lives. There is no other book beyond this book upon which I need to place my trust or look for truth. God has revealed in 66 books his written word, which is the expression of his personal word that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Every book in this Bible points us to the character and the person and the work of Jesus Christ. We need nothing else beyond the scriptures. And it is in this book that you will find the paradigm of family life that some people out there consider to be very unpopular, very socially and politically incorrect. So be it. That's the message. And you know, I honor this visitor because they got the message. They got it loud and clear. This gospel message is offensive, it cuts to the quick of who we are. We are a counterculture, and that is reality. The illusion of conformity seems to resurrect its ugly head, especially during this time of the year. And then the last time we were together in this series, we talked about the question of suffering and pain. The root cause of our doubt when we are in the middle of intense pain and suffering is the alleged sovereignty of man. We took a look at the book of Job in particular and saw there that man can by nature approach a holy God. That's a myth. Our nature precludes us from approaching a holy God. Our nature is corrupt and evil, and we cannot approach a holy God in and of ourselves. That nature is corrupt. We seem to be unable to understand what we have done to deserve so much pain, just like Job. What did I do, Lord? Why am I experiencing this? I don't understand your system of justice. I don't understand the fatherhood of God. And we're even tempted, as Job was to fatalism. It doesn't really matter what I do. It doesn't really matter what good I do or what evil I do, because whether or not I do good or evil, I am going to experience the anger and the wrath of God. And Job finally comes to a place where he is hopeless and says, I cannot approach you if only, if only, if only there were a mediator, an arbiter between you and me. And in the book of Job, that question of the arbiter is never answered. We don't really have it answered until Jesus comes in the 14th chapter of the book of John and says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. That is our arbiter. He is the only one who is able to grab the hand of the Father and the hand of the suffering child and bridge that gap and show us that although we look on the underside of that tapestry, He, a sovereign God, is going to perform marvelous works in our lives and one day will reveal to us his purpose and his plan in allowing so much pain and heartache to come into our lives. Today I want to deal with the fourth question in this series. The question goes something like this if God does indeed love me with an everlasting love, if God indeed has promised to guard me against all evil, if he has promised that he will never leave me and that he will never forsake me, if he has given to me his Holy Spirit to ensure that nothing or no one will be able to separate me from the love of God in Jesus Christ, if all of that is true, then why does it seem as though heaven is silent to the cries of my heart? Is there a love that is lasting? Is there a love that does not and cannot ever betray me? Is there a love that I can trust? Is there a love that I can rest in? The question of love. Now we all know, all of us sitting here, have experienced at one point or another the deficiency of human love. You see, in the Bible, in the New Testament, there are three words for love. The primary word is the word agape, which I'm going to talk about last, but there are two other words. And I believe they represent to most of us sitting here some heartache and pain whereby we become confused about that third kind of love, that is the agape love, which we'll talk about in a moment. The first kind of deficient love is the first word that we find in the scriptures concerning the word love in the New Testament. That's the word eros. Now, we get the word erotic from the word eros. It speaks of a sexual love. Now, you don't have to fish very far through your newspapers or through your gossip columns or through the survey of your own lives to realize how deficient Eros love is. Eros, you see, is tied in in its most sacred sense with marriage and in its most secular sense with lust. Eros covers that broad spectrum of physical attraction and physical desire between men and women. And yes, even in its most extreme form of evil and corruption, men with men and women with women. Eros love covers a broad spectrum. Every godly marriage ought to have Eros love. It's not in and of itself an evil form of love. But outside of the context of marriage, outside of the bonds of marriage, Eros love becomes defiled. And in that context of defilement, Eros love becomes lust. We lust after one another. We lust after someone else's wife or someone else's husband. We lust in order to fulfill that human desire within us that says, I must have what God has forbidden. Every one of us has experienced the failure and the deficiency of that kind of love. Let me suggest to you, as I said just a moment ago, Eros love belongs within the context of a marriage. But I'm going to make one more point in that regard. I don't believe anybody short of a Christian man and a Christian woman within the context of a Christian marriage can fully appreciate Eros love. You see, Eros love is the lowest form of expression of agape love, which is the highest form of expressed love. So only a man who loves the Lord and only a woman who loves the Lord within the context of their marriage relationship can fully appreciate Eros love because it always proceeds beyond Eros into the next level of love, which is Philaos. It's where we get the word Philadelphia from. It speaks of an intimacy between two people. Not sexual intimacy, but an expression of friendship and commitment not only, not only within the context of Eros love, but in a much broader context of commitment of emotion and soul to one another. You see, in a Christian marriage, before your husband is your husband, he is your brother in the Lord. Before your wife is your wife, she is your sister in the Lord. And so we have this context of eros love, which can indeed become defiled, phileos love, which in and of itself can indeed become defiled, but then we have this highest level of love, which is agape love. Now, before we leave phileos love, let me go back and tell you that that word means literally to kiss, or to express an act of friendship, or to become committed to someone, or to have a brotherly love for someone. Matthew 10, 37, Jesus gives us this warning: anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. That's the word phileos. If you phalaos your mother or your brother, or if there is any human relationship in which you are placing your trust ahead of your commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ, that is a deficient love and it's doomed to failure. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Now I gotta tell you something. Always thought I knew what that verse meant. I always thought I knew what it meant. Until we were faced with the reality of losing one of our children. Then all of a sudden, the whole ballgame changes, the whole picture changes because in that context, God says to me, and he says to my wife and to my children, do you love me more than you love the son I have taken? Now, prior to him being taken, I thought I would have said yes. But then I realized and continue to realize how imperfect my love for God really is. Because I continue every day to struggle with whether or not I truly do love him and can honestly say I really love you, even though you have opted to take our child. It shows me how imperfect my love for God is. It shows me how deficient my love for God is because so much trust has been placed in phileos or human relationships that are all going to end one day in death. Remember when Jesus was summoned by the friends of Martha and Mary when Lazarus was near to the point of death? It says in John 11, so the sisters sent word to Jesus, and here was the word, Lord, the one you love is sick. It's interesting in that context, the word that is used is phileos. You see, they still hadn't gotten the message, they still haven't understood agape love. They said, Lord, the one you phileos, the one you have that intimate human relationship with, Lazarus is sick. But see, Christ's love for Lazarus was not within the context of deficient eros love or phileos love. It was a love that far transcended either one of those. Those two are only mere expressions in the lowest level possible of agape love. Then in Revelation 3, 19, he says, Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline, so be earnest and repent. That word for love is also philaos. And it is in the context of human relationships, oftentimes, that God disciplines us. Oftentimes it is within the context of my human commitments to one another that God says, now I am going to invade your life and discipline you and perhaps even rebuke you using your human relationships so that you can emerge to an understanding of a much Greater love, which is agape love. And see, that's the most common usage of the word love in the New Testament. Agape love in the New Testament speaks of God's love for me. And as the result of God working that work of love in me, my love for you. And your love for one another. This is the love of God that cannot fail. A love that is stripped of all of the limitations of human deficiency. It includes the perfected form of Phileos love. It transcends the imperfected form of eros love. It is the love of God that sent Jesus Christ to a cross. Yet it is the form of God's love we have the most difficulty comprehending and reasoning through. That is because agape love carries with it an eternal perspective that is not bound up in finite terms. I say to my wife, Sharon, I love you. Now, in that context, I could say to somebody else in this church, I love you, and it would not mean the same thing to you that it means to her. When I say to her, I love you, that conjures up in her mind 26 years of relationship that has developed both through pain and trial and heartache and grief and suffering and also joy and celebration and laughter. When I say I love you, her image of love and my expression of love cannot be defined in just a few short words. That's Phileos love, that's eros love, but it's even more than that. It's agape love because before she is my wife, she is my sister in Christ. We have a spiritual relationship. Before we have an emotional or a physical relationship, it transcends that kind of love. That's why the Bible tells us that when we go to heaven, there is no marriage. Neither are we given in marriage. Why? Because marriage is a finite institution. It is temporal, it will end when we join the marriage supper of the Lamb, because there's a much deeper commitment and a much deeper love that a man and a woman ought to have for each other. And that's agape love. You can't define that love, you can't put it in finite terms. That is why Jesus fully developed Phileos love amongst his disciples. He taught them how to phalaos one another, how to have an intimate relationship of soul and spirit with one another. Because you see, as he was teaching them how to have that kind of commitment, he was injecting them with a much greater love, a much higher form of love. And as those circles were ever widening, those expressions of God's love becoming more and more understood. So he began with a form of love that they could comprehend. Go over to John chapter 16. We're going to spend a few minutes just in the book of John, so have your fingers ready to walk through the pages. John chapter 16, let me show you what I mean. Jesus begins by teaching his disciples Philaos love. And then he begins to emerge or raise them within the context of that greater love, which is the love of God, Agape love. John 16, look at verse 27. The Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. Now, hearing my definitions of those three words, eros, phaleos, agape, he says here, the Father loves you because you have loved me. Now, when he speaks of the Father's love for his disciples, in this context, which of those three words do you think he used? How many think he used the word eros? Nobody? How many think he used the word phileos? One or two? How many of you think he used the word agape? Most of you. And most of you are wrong. In this context, he uses the word phileos. The father has loved you with phileos love. It's the lower form of love. You see, he was teaching them what the love of the Father is all about, and he injects within this level of their Christian experience the concept of phalaos or friendship love. Go over to John chapter 20. Look at verse 2. The great story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it says, so she came running to Simon Peter, the woman who discovered that he was alive and had been raised from the dead. She came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. All through the book of John, that disciple remains unnamed. Most scholars believe that it is John, the writer of the gospel, that's referred to here. He simply referred to himself as the one whom Jesus loved. Now, during that three and a half year period, while Jesus walked with his disciples and talked with his disciples, what word do you think he used here in the context of describing John's relationship to Jesus, Jesus' relationship to John? Again, it's the word phileos. It's that intermediate form of love, that love of commitment, that love of friendship, the one Jesus Philea, the one he loved with a brotherly love. They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they have laid him. But you see, that love comes from God in its purest form. Agape love cannot be fully appreciated or defined because it is a love that constantly matures and is constantly in process. Go back to John chapter 5. John 5. And you'll notice early on in his ministry, Jesus makes a statement about the love his disciples had. John 13, verse 1. It was just before the Passover feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave the world and to go to the Father, having a loved, agape love, his own, who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent, underline those words, the full extent of that agape love. You see what he's doing here? You might call it the series of concentric circles. And as he matures them in their understanding of his work and ministry, as he begins to unfold more and more of his character and love, more and more of his goodness and grace, more and more of his mercy and his purpose in coming, as he begins to show them more and more the cross. More and more of what he was going to do when he died on that cross. He is teaching them more and more of agape love. Same chapter, verse 34. He says, Now I'm going to give you a new commandment. Agape love one another. Present verb, by the way, which simply means continuous action. You don't simply agape love somebody one time. It's a process of love. You're constantly seeing that person through the eyes of Christ. It's amazing to me how almost blasphemous it is for Christian people to have conflict with one another. Think of the Christian person, the believer with whom you now, as you sit here, have conflict. According to my Bible, God so loved that person that he sent his son Jesus Christ to be butchered, battered, bloodied up, and beaten on that cross for that person with whom you have conflict, that as you sit here right now, you can honestly say, I do not love them with the love of God. Yet he loved them enough to die for them. How can you justify that? How can you justify that kind of discord? Especially when he says, I give you a new commandment. Keep on loving, in agape love one another. For as I have loved you, notice John 13, 34, as I have loved you, so you, what's the next word? What is it? Must love one another. Now you stop and think about that. To show you how imperfected our understanding of love is. Man comes into the office. I'll never forget this years ago. He is committed to divorcing his wife. He's gotten involved with another woman. He professes faith in Jesus Christ. She professes faith in Jesus Christ. He comes into the office and he says, I want a divorce. And I said, You don't have grounds for a divorce. In fact, the Bible commands you to love your wife as Christ loved the church. And he looked at me across the desk and he shook his head and he said, I cannot do that. I said, Alright. Christ has commanded you to love your wife as you love yourself. He said, I'm sorry I can't do that either. I said, Alright, Christ has commanded you to love your enemies. You see, no matter how you write off the command, it always comes back down to the same thing. If you have truly come to understand the gospel message, if you have truly been to the cross and you look up into the face of the Savior and you see that blood dripping from his hands and feet, as you listen to the jeers and the screams of the crowd as they walk by, not knowing that the very focal point of history was in front of them. If you can stand there at the foot of that cross and hear the screams of his pain as he is alienated and separated from his father because of his love for you, and walk away from that and say, No, I will not love that person with agape love, then I have to bring into question, in all honesty, whether or not you truly understand the gospel message, whether you have truly been converted and brought to that foot of the cross. Because if you really comprehend the love of God for you, you're going to have something that is so contagious, so pent up inside, so much of a burning hammer, as Jeremiah calls it, that it has to be expressed, it has to be shared, it has to come out. Because if God's love is to you, God's love also has to come through you. Agape, love. That's why he would say over in John 14, verse 21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved of my father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. Again, present verb, I will continue to show myself to him. Then he says in verse 24, he who does not agape me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own, they belong to the Father who sent me. You see, probably the best illustration we have of this is when Peter was restored after Jesus was risen from the dead. I've preached a whole message on this before, and so I'm not going to belabor the point now, but as Jesus was on the shore preparing the breakfast for the disciples, they noticed that it was him. They were out fishing in the boats. And as soon as they recognized that it was the Lord, they began to paddle towards shore, all except Peter, who stripped himself naked and dove into the water. There's many theories as to why he did that. I really honestly don't know why he did it. Some say he was hiding because he was so guilt-ridden. Some say he wanted to get there faster. I don't know. All I know is that some form of emotion pent up within Peter, and no sooner did he get onto the shore, Jesus stands there and confronts him with a very important question. Simon, son of John, do you truly agape me more than all else? Yes, Lord, he said, you know that I phileos you. That's not what I asked you, Peter. Again, Jesus said, Simon, son of John, do you truly agape me? He answered, Yes, Lord, you know that I file us you. He still didn't get it. Take care of my sheep, he said. The third time he said to him, Simon, listen closely now, son of John. Twice I have asked you, do you agape me? Do you agape me? Twice you have answered, I phileos you, I phileos you. I'm gonna ask you a third time. Simon, son of John, do you even phileos me? And then the Bible says Peter became very troubled because Jesus asked him, Do you phileos me? You see what Jesus is doing? He's bringing Peter to understand how imperfect his love is, how weak and deficient Phileos' love is. That something else had to happen to Peter. Something else had to change his life. You see the ever-widening circle of God's love, a love of God that cannot be fully known, not in this life and not in the next life. You say, what do you mean? When we get to heaven, we will not fully comprehend the love of God. I don't believe we will. You say, but wait a minute, I thought heaven was the state of perfection. Yes, it is. But I believe when we get to heaven, we are going to be injected into an eternal process of ever discovering forever, for all eternity, in ever-widening circles, we are going to be rediscovering the image of God, which cannot ever, ever be exhausted. The plan and purpose of God in your salvation ought to be enough proof of his love for you. Do you know what the scripture we read this morning? Herein is love. Not that we loved God, but that he what? First, did you get that word? First loved me. Listen. Roll this baby around in your mind for a minute. Just let this sink in. In eternity future, we will be ever discovering eternally the love of God. Never exhausting it. But now let's go back to eternity past. Before God said, let there be light, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit convened. And for a reason, let this roll around now, for a reason known only to him. God the Father purposed and planned the salvation of his people by name. He didn't look down and say, What a wonderful person you're going to be. Therefore, on the basis of that wonderful person you're going to be, I am going to choose you to be one of my disciples. No, he didn't do that. For a reason known only to him. How many of you know the Lord this morning? Raise your hand. All right, now listen, if you can raise your hand this morning, and as I raise my hand right now, I am in eternity past. And God the Father purposed in love and grace to take a miserable, sinful, rotten wretch like me, with all of my lack of understanding of agape love, grabs a hold of that hand and says, I am going to walk you through eternity future, and I'm never going to let you go. So in your time period, however long that is, I am now 46 years old, going on 80. However long God decides to give me life, listen, in eternity past, he grabbed the hold of that hand and he said, now when you're born, on January the 16th, 1948, nine months prior to that, when you were conceived in your mother's womb, I am holding on to you so that as you grow older, I am going to regenerate you and develop within you a new spirit. Because you see, Chuck, until I do that, you cannot ever respond to me because your spirit as a part of the human race is dead. But I have purposed from way back in eternity past that when you were conceived, I was going to grab a hold of your hand, and at some point in your life, I am going to inject the Holy Spirit into your spirit, and I am going to regenerate you. I'm going to give you a brand new nature and a brand new heart. You're not going to have anything whatsoever to do with that. That is what it means to be born again. Passive verb, born from above, action outside of myself. You must be born from above. The Holy Spirit regenerates, and that's not all, Chuck. That's not all I'm going to do. In time, I am going to use a variety of circumstances in your life. I'm going to use preachers. I'm going to use teachers. I'm going to use your wife. I'm going to use your mother. I'm going to use your father. I'm going to use a Catholic priest. I'm going to use the Mass on Christmas Eve. I'm going to use the picture of the cross in that elementary school with Jesus hanging on it. I'm going to use those small talks, little chats I used to have with you as a little boy, when you felt close to me. And I'm also going to use those times when you were a little boy that you didn't feel so close to me. I'm going to use the circumstances and details in your life. And even though you think I'm going to let you go, I am going to be holding on to you because I purposed that in eternity past. And I am going to use all of those circumstances to bring you to Easter of 1968, when I came into your life and brought you to repentance and faith and converted you to myself, justifying you against the backdrop of law. And from that point on, I am going to create within your spirit a hunger for the Word of God so that day in and day out you can continually put off the old man and put on the new man that is. Renewed after the image of Christ within you, so that one day when you die, or one day when I come again, I will present you in glory to myself where you can be ever discovering in greater and greater ways the eternal love and glory of God. And I'm never going to let you go, and no one can separate you from my love. Do you know that love? Can you understand that love? As you walk through your life, and faith begins to waver. Suffering begins to emerge. You begin to question the love of God. You begin to question that process where he said, I'm not gonna let you go. Remember what he said to Paul? And what Paul then conveyed to us? He said in 2 Corinthians 4, he says, I'm hard-pressed, not crushed. Perplexed, not in despair. Persecuted, but not abandoned. Struck down, but not destroyed. For you see, Paul said, I always carry around in my body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in my body. Oh, we know all of the pressures common to all of us in life: job, finances, health issues, family conflicts, children, all those things that attack the human spirit. Add to those the more intense forms of suffering, such as a prolonged illness or the sudden death of a loved one, and you begin to feel the meaning of the words hard-pressed. But notice he sets the borders of suffering, hard-pressed but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. Listen, as Christians, we are not stoics. The Christian is not living in a fantasy world either. Paul freely admitted the struggles and the pressures he was experiencing, as did some of the great heroes of the Bible, who even lamented the very days in which they were born, like Moses and Job and Jeremiah. But standing in stark contrast to that pressing and perplexing and seemingly crushing experience that we call life, is the agape love of God in the words of Jesus in Matthew 11 Come to me, all ye who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Don't we tend to say, This much more, Lord, but no more? This much, Lord, but no more than that. Remember, Paul did not say we are easy pressed on every side, but hard pressed on every side. Is Jesus leading us under some false pretenses in coming to the Christian faith? Can the hard pressing issues that we as Christians have to face truly be easy? His yoke is easy and his burden is light. How can this be? How can this be? You see, both words are relative. Easy is compared to hard. Light is compared to heavy. What is difficult to bear without Christ is made far more bearable with Christ. What is heavy to bear apart from Christ is made lighter with Christ. To suffer without Christ is to risk being totally and completely crushed. That's why Paul adds, perplexed, but not in despair. Peter would say, dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial that you are suffering. As though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ. That when his glory is revealed, you may be overjoyed. I've got to tell you, I look forward to that day. I look forward to that day. As a man part of the human race, I suffer the same kind of pain that's common to everyone. But as a Christian, we suffer trials of faith that test the very existence of our commitment to the love of God. Christians can indeed become perplexed, but not in despair, although they may be finding themselves sitting at the very rim of despair while they're sitting in the midst of a crucible of affliction. It's the kind of pain that crushes the spirit, wounds the soul as no other pain can. A pain that makes all other forms take on a new perspective when you come face to face with the enemy of death. That's why the writer of Proverbs would say in the 15th chapter: a happy heart makes a face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. God's grace is not an anesthetic, but it is sufficient. The ultimate crisis of faith will be faced by every single one of you someday. Someday. What will we do when we die? What will we do when a loved one dies? What if it's sudden? What if it's without warning? What if God decides to invade our lives quickly like a sharp piercing arrow? What then will you still bask in the agape love of God? Will you still understand what Jesus meant when he said, Do you really love me more than all else? Do you really love me more than all else? Has your faith rooted in the very essence of the love of God? Have you comprehended with all of the saints what is the breadth and depth and height of the love of God? Let me close with this. We are living under no illusions as Christians, at least I hope you're not. Just before Jesus left the earth, he turns to Simon Peter. And he says, now I'm paraphrasing, Peter, I'm not going to allow you to live under any illusions as to what the Christian life is. Listen, do you love me? Do you love me? And remember what Peter said both times. He demonstrated the inferior love. But then Jesus turned to him and said, Peter, do you even love me with that kind of love? And Peter was grieved in his heart. And when he was grieved in his heart, he turned to Jesus and he said, Yes, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. Implied in that is, you know how imperfect my love is, and I cannot really understand the kind of love you're speaking of unless you give it to me. At that point, Jesus turns to Simon Peter and he says, Listen, listen closely. Understand this fully. I tell you the truth. When you were younger, you dressed yourself and you went where you wanted to go. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you to where you do not want to go. Jesus said this to indicate to Peter by what kind of death he would glorify God. Then he said to him, Follow me. Isn't it interesting that he didn't say to Peter, Peter, you're going to be one of the greatest preachers who ever lived someday. In one sermon, you're going to see 3,000 people converted. Peter? You are going to be the leader of the early church, so much so that for generations to come, many people are going to actually think you were the first pope. Peter? You are going to see thousands converted under your ministry. In fact, Peter, you're actually going to be the author of two, perhaps three, of the books of the New Testament. Peter? You're going to be a great man. Is that what he told him? He said, Peter, there was a day in your life where you went unrestricted, but now that you're following me, they're going to nail you to a cross. They're going to gird you up on a cross. They're going to strip you naked, and they're going to crucify you there. Be under no illusions, Peter. It is only as you live in that kind of faith, willing to endure that kind of suffering, that you are going to be able to learn the greatest lessons of agape love. And until you bow and say, Lord, even me, even me, I yield myself in absolute obedience because I want to discover a dimension of your love that I never knew before. Then and only then can you understand the meaning of the love of God. Would you stand, join hands with those around you as we close? As we come to this time, O Lord, we examine our hearts before you. And we realize how imperfect our love is. We realize, Lord, that we have our lives neatly compartmentalized only to miss the essence of life's most valuable lessons when pain or divine intervention strikes. Life seems to be what happens while we are waiting for life to start. In faith, you call us to live in the courage to face things the way they are and not the way we want them to be. Lord, we realize that to do otherwise is to miss the love of God. And so, Father, help us to understand the love of God in a way that we never understood it before, starting by bringing us to the foot of the cross. Show us that great love.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

Now may the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of his Holy Spirit, abide with each of you now until Christ comes again and forevermore. And all God's speakers.