Love and God

Welcome! This month we have been exploring some of what the Bible has to say about relationships, and so far we have talked about the nature of agape love, love in the context of the relationship between husband and wife, and love in the context of family. I wanted to start today with a video clip produced by the children of a pastor in one of our sister churches in Florida. This video was shown at one of the Faithwalkers conference teachings this past December. I think it is a great example of agape love in the context of the family.

The video can be found here.

For the sake of the recording, let me summarize what the video has shown. A family is sitting down to breakfast together, and they run out of orange juice right before a young boy can pour some for himself. His brother, also a young boy, offers to get him some, and goes to the refrigerator only to find that they don’t have any. He jumps up to grab a big hat, and then takes the hat and goes out the front door. The next thing you know, he is in some kind of shed up on a tractor and starts the tractor. He drives out to some orange trees, and pulls some oranges off of the tree, filling up his hat. He then restarts the tractor and goes back, brings the hat full of oranges into the house (losing a few along the way). Then he goes to his back porch and uses an electric juicer to juice the oranges until he has a cup of juice in a measuring cup. He takes the measuring cup to the kitchen and pours the juice into a cup, and then brings it cheerfully to his brother.

At the conference, the pastor and father, Matt Gordon, was quick to point out that he had no idea his older children producing the video were planning to have one of his younger children actually drive a tractor, and he didn’t find out about it until the deed was done. I am sure some of you parents were trying to find the hidden strings or older person hiding off camera or other tricks that made it look like this little kid was driving the tractor – well, there were no tricks!

Anyway, apart from just how much fun this video is, there are three things about it that I really like, that also make me really think. All three occur in the last few seconds of the video. The first thing is that the boy who has done all these crazy things to bring his brother a glass of orange juice is just so happy when he brings it to him. He’s not grumbling or complaining or even seeking sympathy by sighing or acting tired or even telling him what he has done. The second thing is that the boy who has received his orange juice has no idea how much his brother has gone through to bring it to him. He simply accepts the orange juice like it is no big deal. And the third thing that happens is that the boy who has done all this, even after seeing his brother accept it with politeness but little in the way of genuine thankfulness, still remains cheerful and happy.

Do you think of God as joyful, as happy? This goes against our culture, which, when it thinks about God at all, tends to view Him as a stern judge, a cosmic killjoy that doesn’t want us to have any fun. Generations ago there was a saying that “children are to be seen but not heard,” meaning that while adults are present, children should amuse themselves silently without disturbing the big people. Although this is view of children in the presence of adults is pretty much gone from our culture, it does somehow still have a similar view towards how God wants all people to be around Him.

Now one aspect of God is His holiness and His majesty and His awesomeness, and to be in the full presence of this is so overwhelming that the only appropriate response seems to be to fall down in worship at His feet. With what I am going to say today, I do not want you to in any way think that this is not so or that I seek to minimize this. I most certainly do not.

But there is another side to God, one of joy and happiness, and eagerness even to serve. Even in Genesis 1, when God is making the creation, again and again it says He looked and saw that it was good. You could equivalently translate this as saying that He looked and what He saw made Him happy. God liked His creation. It gave Him pleasure. It gave Him joy. Of course, later, man sinned, and God’s joy turned to sorrow; Gen. 6:6 says He was grieved over man and His heart was filled with pain. Why? Because He loved man, He loved what man had been made to be, He rejoiced and delighted in man as man was meant to be, and it grieved Him to see that which had given Him joy turn against Him and become bent toward self-destruction.

Later, in Deut. 28 and other passages, God says that He delighted in doing good for the people of Israel, the people He had chosen to bless. But again, He was also grieved at their sin. Still later, the Bible says that God delighted in David. David writes of God:

He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me. – 2 Sam. 22:17-20 (see also Psalm 18:16-19)

And in Jesus, everything that David says here is true of us. We too were in deep waters, drowning in our sin, in our lives separated from God. But He reached down and took hold of us, drawing us out of those waters. And we were captured, held by the world, the flesh, and the devil, unable to save ourselves or even break free from their constant grasp. But He was our support, bringing us out of captivity into a place that is spacious, a place with freedom. And He rescued us because He delights in us. This is so true! God delights in you!

The Queen of Sheba, meeting Solomon, also acknowledged the clear fact that God delighted in Solomon, clear because of how Solomon had been blessed by God:

She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true. But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me; in wisdom and wealth you have far exceeded the report I heard. How happy your men must be! How happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on the throne of Israel. Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, He has made you king, to maintain justice and righteousness.” – I Kings 10:6-9

Read Ephesians 1 to learn of the many incredible blessings we have in Christ, greater blessings because of their eternal nature than any of the material blessings Solomon ever had. What would the Queen of Sheba say to you, seeing how God has blessed you in Christ? Would she not say, “How happy, how joyful you must be! Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in you, who has adopted you as sons and daughters of Christ, who has redeemed you, who has placed you with an eternal future that is glorious beyond imagining! Because of the Lord’s eternal love for man, for you, He has made you greater and more blessed than any earthly king.”

God’s delight in those who desire a relationship with Him is a recurring theme in Psalms. Here are just 2 examples:

The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love. – Psalm 147:11

Part of love is delighting in the object of your love. God loves us, and He delights in us.

Let Israel rejoice in their Maker; let the people of Zion be glad in their King. Let them praise His Name with dancing and make music to Him with tambourine and harp. For the Lord takes delight in His people; He crowns the humble with salvation. Let the saints rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds. – Psalm 149:2-5

Sing for joy on their beds? Sure, why not? For the Lord takes delight in us!

And now let us turn to the New Testament. It is here I find the strongest parallels with the video I have shown you today.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. – Hebrews 12:2

Recall how the boy in the video was happy to go to great lengths just to bring his brother a glass of orange juice. How like Christ! Jesus, for the joy set before Him, was willing to go to the cross! We really have no idea what this means. Recall how the boy who received his orange juice in the video had no idea what his brother had gone through to bring it to him. We, too, have only an inkling of what happened on that cross and afterwards. We cannot even begin to imagine the physical torture, the agony, of the brutal beatings even before the crucifixion, let alone the pain of being pierced in hands and feet and hoisted up, fighting against excruciating pain for each additional breath, on and on, until the end finally came. And all this was really only the physical side – we can only guess at what it meant for Jesus the Son of God to experience separation from His Father, to experience the punishment due for the sins of the world, for your sins, my sins, and the sins of billions of others. This is beyond our ability to imagine.

Sometimes I feel guilty about this. Shouldn’t we have a better grasp of what He went through? I don’t want to be like that child in the video who was clueless about what his brother had gone through! And to a degree, in a certain way, I think this is appropriate. In another way it is not. What do I mean by this? Well, for one thing, we don’t need to experiment on ourselves, testing the effects of pain, and we certainly don’t need to crucify ourselves as a few people around the world do every year as part of Easter. God never asked us to do such a literal thing.

But Jesus did say,

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” – Matt. 16:24

What did Jesus mean? He did not mean to literally choose to crucify oneself. The answer is in the verses immediately surrounding this verse. Jesus had just told his disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and on the third day be raised to life, after which Peter said “Never, Lord.” Jesus then said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan!” And this verse about taking up your cross and following came after this one. The meaning was to imitate Christ in this agape love, and included in this, I believe, was to imitate the self-sacrifice for love with the joy that Christ had; for the joy set before Him He endured the cross. The verses following this verse talk of the opposite to this life of self-sacrifice, a life one tries to save, or get gain from, all of which is the antithesis of a life characterized by giving and self-sacrifice, a life of agape love. This is what Christ has done for us.

I also think about how Paul spoke of his intense desire to know Christ. He said,

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death. – Phil. 3:10

And so, in dying to self, in loving sacrificially for others, in being like that boy who got the orange juice, we do share in the fellowship of suffering, we do get to know Him more, we do get to better appreciate and understand the depth of His love and, yes, joyful sacrifice for us.

Will we ever really understand the depths of what Christ has done for us, though? No, we won’t, not on this side of heaven. But just like how that child was not upset or angry with his brother for not appreciating what he had done for him, I don’t think that God will be upset with us either. He loves us! He desires an eternity of intimate fellowship with us. This is why He died for us, to rescue us, to make it so that we could be with Him forever.

What does He expect of us? In other words, what is most important for us to do in response to who He is and what He has done? I am reminded of the Pharisees who asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment.

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ – Matt 22:37-39

Because Jesus is God, isn’t it true that what Jesus was saying was, “Love Me. Love Me with every ounce of your being, all your heart and soul and mind. And also love those around you. Replace your selfish love with a love for others; let your love for others be as strong as your love was formerly for yourself.” This is the heart of a genuine relationship with God.

Remember that love is a choice. Our world teaches that love is only a response, a reaction, and that we are helpless before it. Either that Greek god, Eros, shoots us with one of his arrows, or he doesn’t. Our culture tends to think that eros love is the only love there is. The Bible doesn’t even mention eros love. Agape love is a choice. We can choose to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. We choose it with action upon action upon action. We choose it moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day. We choose to love with joy. We choose to obey what God’s Word instructs us to do. We choose to make His priorities our priorities. We choose to submit our hearts to Him, to seek Him, to worship Him, to ask Him to ever change us, to make us love Him more, to help us  love sacrificially, to use us, to send us, and to speak and love through us.

God loves us! God loves you! God is crazy in love with you! Jesus has shown His love for you by laying down His life for you, by going to the cross for you. How can we not love Him in return?

And so we now remember Him, as He has instructed us to do. Do not do this lightly, but instead open your life up to Jesus. Ask Him to search your heart. If He gently, lovingly, reminds you of areas you have left closed to Him, areas of unconfessed sin, bring them to Him, confessing your sins and rededicating your hearts to Him. As it says in I Corinthians,

A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. – I Cor. 11:28

To not do this is to bring condemnation on yourself, as it says in the following verses, because it means you are refusing to open yourself up to God, to restore your relationship with Him yet again. Do not do this! Complete and total forgiveness, complete and total restoration of your relationship with God is only a prayer away. God does not want you to remain feeling condemned; the Holy Spirit only brings feelings of guilt so that you will confess your sins to Him and seek that sweet restoration of relationship that is always available no matter what you have done.

But after you have done this, in your own time, come up and take the bread, symbolic of His body broken for you – because He loves you – and take the cup, symbolic of His blood spilled for you – because He loves you. And in your own time, as you are ready, partake of these symbols with thankful, loving, and joyful hearts.