Depths Unmeasured

Depths Unmeasured

Ephesians 5:1-2, Ephesians 3:19

December 2, 2004

I. Several hundred feet below the ground of the Texas hill country is and underground lake. A cavern that holds the water that gives life to a dry country. It’s called the Edwards Aquifer.

A. The people in South Texas know a lot about this cavern. They know that it is 175 miles long and that it runs from east to West except where it goes under San Antonio and it runs North to South there.

B. They know it gives life to several thousand acres of land, by providing irrigation to farms, and watering lawns and providing drinking water. There is a lot that South Texans know about the Edwards Aquifer.

C. But, for all the things that they know they don’t know how deep it is! They have no way to know how much water it actually holds.

D. You would think they did though. When we went to San Antonio a few years ago, every time I would watch the weather report I would get the Edwards Aquifer report. Every meteorologist in San Antonio would tell you the aquifer level every day as if they knew the number of gallons of water to the ounce, but they don’t.

E. They use it, they count on it, and they could not live where they do without it, but they can’t measure it.

F. Does that remind you of anything? It should. It is not a pool of water it’s a pool of love. God’s love, we depend on it, we can’t live without it, but we can’t measure its depth with our human minds.

G. To dunk a life in God’s love means that it can be a life that really has life. Yea, we know the impact of God’s love, but we really can’t measure the depth of it.

H. We have a lot of moral meteorologist in our world. We have a lot of people who try to keep track of the level of as if they’re afraid that its gonna run out.

I. They seem to be afraid that if some people are gonna use it all up and there won’t be enough for the rest of us who deserve it more.

J. You know terrorist, and traitors and wife beaters, if you let them have some of God’s love they might use up too much, because we humans really don’t know exactly how deep it runs. So we try to measure it out in small enough portions to make sure we have enough.

II. But God does give us a hint of how deep his love runs. Through the many ways that God communicates to us, he says "You want to see the depth of my love" follow me up this path.

A. Its not hard to follow just look for the trail of blood spots on the ground as you walk up the hill that is shaped like a skull. And, before you look up when you get to the top listen really close so you can hear God whisper this is how much I love you.

B. Then look up and see the man with the muscles on his back ripped by a whip, and look at his eyes and lips that are swollen shut from beatings, and don’t forget to notice that pain on his face as the blood trickles down from the thorns that are crushed into his scalp.

C. Now watch as the muscles in his legs get to the point that they just will not hold him up anymore. Of all the things that Jesus endured on the Cross I think that is the one that I can relate to the most.

D. As much as I don’t look like it now, I was an athlete. I played all the sports I could from the time I was about 8 years old. I ran the sprints, and ran the sprints and ran the sprints.

E. I know what it feels like to have you legs get to the point of exhaustion where they will just not hold you up anymore. I know what it feels like to have the muscles in your legs turn to jelly and simply refuse to hold your weight.

F. I know what it feels like to have you lungs starve for oxygen but I don’t know what it is like to have my legs refuse to hold me up, and it cut off my oxygen.

G. When Jesus was on the Cross when his legs would refuse to hold him up, when the agony in His muscles finally made them give way, the weight of his body would collapse his diaphragm, and cut off the air to His lungs.

H. As you stand at the foot of the Cross to see the picture of how much God loves you, watch as God’s legs give up, and he sinks down, watch as the air shuts off to His lungs, and watch Him at the edge of suffocation shove himself back up on legs that scream and feet that have a nail grinding against the bone.