The Glory of God Series
April 27, 2008
The Glory of God in His Love
There are many ways in which love can express itself. There are many different feelings that we associate with love. Perhaps the most inspiring aspect of love is its diversity. I love my wife. I love my parents. I love my parents in a very different way than I love my wife. I love my friends, but in a very different way than my parents and my wife. Then I love chocolate. Love is a very diverse word that we use to describe our feelings towards very different things. This idea of love expresses itself in many different ways. Sometimes love is expressed through words, through gifts, through personal contact, through quality time, through service, or through sacrifice. Love is seen in many different ways. Each person has a certain love language that they speak and a love language that they receive. Some people show their love for others by serving them with all that they have. These are the kind of people who drop anything to help their friends and family. Other people show their love by telling you about it. You know the type. Where it seems that every time you see them at some point they tell you: “I love you brother” or “I love you man.” Love has many ways that it can express itself.
This week we are looking at the Glory of God in His love. This is such an important aspect of the character of God. If God didn’t care about us, the only reason to glorify Him would be out of fear of what would happen if we didn’t. God is an amazing God. He is all powerful and all knowing. He can do literally whatever He wants. No one could oppose Him and nothing can stop Him. Yet with all the cosmic power that He has He does not abuse or misuse it. He uses His power and His might for the good of His children. God is a God of love. Love is not just a part of God, it is one of His defining characteristics. God is love. He is the source of all love that exists, of everything that is good and right in the world. The love of God is such an amazing thing, that this characteristic alone is worthy of praise. We glorify God for who He is, and what He does. What God does, is love.
Love is an incredible thing. It drives us to new heights, motivates us to do things we would never do, love makes us brave, love makes us strong, love is a driving force of our lives. Love also makes us stupid. People do the stupidest things in the name of love. When you are first around that special someone it’s like for some reason you have a hard time keeping food down. You know? It’s like when he or she is around it’s like your stomach tosses and turns. You may have trouble sleeping. If you have a fight or disagreement its like there is nothing you can do to take your mind off it or think of anything else until it is resolved. Then you have times that for some reason you are totally inarticulate. You feel like you can’t speak or hardly even think properly. Whenever that person is around it is like your mind is mashed potatoes. You mumble and babbled your way through most conversations. It is so stupid. Why should love affect your appetite? Why should it affect your ability to sleep or to think? It doesn’t make any sense at all. It is like love is more powerful than reason or logic. People do the craziest things for love. They will stand up and make fools of themselves in public. People take jobs, move, leave behind family and friends, take up new hobbies, change the way they dress, and radically change their lives in the name of love.
Here’s a wonderful example of love making someone stupid. My wife and I met at the apartments we used to live at. I met her one Sunday afternoon and was just really drawn to her. She had told me where she lived so one night I had actually had John and Cindy over for diner. I had made some food and thought to myself, “If I can get her to eat this food that I made, she will surely fall in love with me.” It was a wonderful ploy. So like a total idiot I walked over to her apartment and knocked on the door. When she answered I greeted her with this perfectly crafted sentence: “Hi…I uhhh…have…I made food…that I have…and you might be hungry…and if you want…I have food,” or something to that brilliant effect. Needless to say she fell in love with my wonderful ability to speak and then we got married.
I was talking to Tim earlier this week and he told me Jamie’s ring is the only thing he ever bought that cost more than his guitars. When you finally meet that special someone you go out and you look at all these rings because for some reason love makes you want to (or at least willing to) spend thousands of dollars on a little piece of metal that she can put on her finger. Doesn’t that seem strange? It is a little piece of metal wrapped in a circle with a clear rock in the top. It can’t do anything. You can’t call your friends with it. You can’t use it to check your email. It doesn’t cook, or clean. It can’t take you from one place to another. You can’t sit down after a long hard days work on it. It just sits there on her finger. Love makes us crazy. Some people even become vegetarians in the name of love. If that is not proof that love makes you do stupid things, I don’t know what is. People do the craziest things in the name of love because love is an incredibly powerful thing that overcomes our logic or reasoning and sometimes our self control.
Love makes you crazy. Just think of a time when you experienced someone’s love for you. Do you remember how it felt? Do you remember how incredible and wonderful and powerful it was to feel the love of another person? Nothing on this earth is quite like it. There is no true substitute for love, it is perhaps the most powerful and inspiring force at work in the world. Everyone needs it. Most everybody wants its. Some who have it want more of it. We all seek to find love in our lives, some are desperate for it. People look in bars, at parties, and now go on-line. There are millions of people in the U.S alone that are looking for love on-line. Love is obviously a very powerful driving force. It appears that everyone is looking for love anywhere they can find it. Yet if our love for each other can motivate us, fuel us, and drive us to do incredible things, if our love for each other can make us stupid and change everything that we are, what do you think God’s love would do? Even imperfect love is a force to be reckoned with. If the imperfect, conditional, temporary, limited love that we have for each other can motivate us to do unimaginable things, what would the perfect, unconditional, eternal love of God look like? If the imperfect love motivates and drives us…what would perfect love do?
There is this story in the Bible about a young man who goes to his father and asks for some money. Actually, he basically says to his father: “Dad, I wish you were dead. I don’t care about you at all. I do not love you. I wish you would just die at least then I could have my inheritance. I want you to die, so why don’t we just skip the small talk, you give me my money, I will leave and you can be dead to me.” Can you imagine how hurt this father would have been? Can you imagine how painful it would be for him to hear his son say that? Now for some reason, probably out of dumb love the father actually gives the son his share of the inheritance. The son takes it he goes off and he wastes it. I mean he absolutely squanders every cent. He lives a wild life pursuing instant gratification. He goes to the parties, he has fun, spends his money on girls, booze, probably even some drugs. He does all the things a responsible young man would never do. Things are going great. He had no worries, he had no cares, no troubles, no responsibilities. He was having some great times, meeting some cool people, making some great friends. Life is so much better than it was when he lived with his father. Now he was free. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to. There were no rules at all. The young man loved it. He was having the time of his life. Then the money ran out. Then everything changed. When he had money he had friends, he had fun when the money ran out his fantasy life ended and a harsh reality sank in. He had nothing. No friends, no money…no fun. It got so bad that he was begging for scraps, for leftovers. Suddenly the life that he had at home did not seem so bad. His father’s rules made sense. In fact he almost missed them. Finally after hitting rock bottom this young man decided that he should go home. He knew he could not be his father’s son, but he thought maybe his dad could give him a job. At this point he was desperate enough to try anything.
While he is on his way home his father sees him from a long way off. Despite what this young man had done, his father ran to him. He ran! This young man had wounded his father deeply, but when he came back his father was waiting. His father did not sit in the house waiting until the son came to the door. He did not wait for his son to get home. As soon as he saw his child walking toward his house, the father dropped everything he was doing and ran as fast as he could. The father grabs his son holds him close and before the son can say a word, the father says “Welcome home.” Think about this: the son told his father that he wanted him to die and even after all of that, the father still loves his son. The father runs to his son and welcomes him back to the family. The father restores his son. Just like that. He son wasted his estate, shamed his name, and dishonored him continuously and yet before his son can even offer up an apology the father takes his son home.
This is truly an amazing story of love. The love a father has for his child is powerful. It is inspiring, maybe even life changing. But this is not some far off story. This is our story. We are this young son. We are the one’s who wander astray. We rejected God and His rules, and His life to pursue life our own way. We are this lost son who walked away from his father. That is you, and that is me. This is our story.
Can you see just how much love the father has for His children? Some of you know all to well that love is not always a happy story. You know that it does not always have a happy ending. Sure fairy tales and hopeless romantics are nice, but in the real world, love stinks, in fact it can down right hurt.
Don’t you see, God’s love is not like the love of this world. You may have a hard time accepting love because you have been hurt by it in the past. For some love has been more painful than it has been enjoyable. Maybe you loved someone and they are gone now. Its not that they stopped loving you or you stopped loving them its just that you can’t be with them. Perhaps they moved away and you have lost contact, or maybe they passed away and you cannot be with them at all. Love hurts you because the love that you have is no longer around. All you want to do is hear their voice…maybe see their face…but you know you cant and it breaks your heart.
Maybe the pain you feel is not because the person you loved went away, but because the love you had went away. Maybe you hurt deep inside because this person who promised to be with you forever, is no longer around. You made a lot of promises, said a lot of things, and now…what? Where are they? What happened to everything they said? Was it real? Was any of it real? Maybe you hurt because your love deserted you, betrayed, abandoned you, left you broken and in pieces. So when you think of love you don’t feel good about it. You don’t feel good about love because you know how much it hurt to love and have that love go away.
Maybe you feel the pain of love because the person that you loved betrayed the trust you put in them. Perhaps it was a father who was physically and emotionally abusive. The man who was suppose to take care of you, raise you, and protect you betrayed your trust and he abused you. Maybe it was your mother who was supposed to love you no matter what who was always making you feel worthless and stupid. Maybe it was your spouse who was unfaithful the vows you took on your wedding day.
Perhaps you have been hurt by love. Perhaps you have been mistreated and abused by love. You experience has taught you not to get too involved because the more you care, the more you love, the more it hurts when it comes crumbling down. Maybe you do not have the best feelings about love. But you have never had a love like this. The love this world offers is powerful, it is compelling, it is stronger than logic or reason or any force of the mind. It inspires us, motivates us, and makes us stupid…But for some reason it also hurts us. That is not how God’s love works. The pain you feel from love is because the love that you had was imperfect. It was flawed from the beginning. Man is not capable of this perfect love, we can get close, but our love will always be imperfect. We will always have moments of selfishness, of anger, of pride, we will have times when we just do not care. No matter how great the love we have in this world is, this love is by nature flawed. That is not the love God offers you.
God’s love for you is different from the love found in this world. The world loves beautiful, skilled, fun, easy to be around people. The world loves you for how you make it feel. I heard of a couple that was happily married for a number of years. One day the wife got in a car accident and had to be taken to the hospital. This woman survived the accident but was disfigured by the accident. In a few weeks, her husband told her he was leaving her because he just didn’t love her any more. Because of her accident, she was not as beautiful on the outside, so her husband stopped loving her.
God’s love for His children is not based on who we are or how we look. God’s love for us is not based on our appearance. It is not based on how attractive you are or how fit or athletic you might be. God’s love is not based on our talent, our abilities, or our strengths. God’s love is not dependent on anything. It has no conditions. It has no limits. It just is. God’s love for you is unconditional. You do not have to be popular, successful, talented, rich, busy, or even average. It does not matter how poor you are, how many mistakes you have made, how many times you have failed, or how many friends you have. It does not matter what you do, it doesn’t matter who you are, God will always love you. Nothing you can do will change that. Nothing you can do will take that away because the love that God has for you is not based on who you are but on who He is. God loves you because you are you and He made you.
If I could talk to your hearts for just a minute: God’s love is so incredible. The love He offers you will never go away. He will never leave you or forsake you. His love for you will never fade. He loves you not with this flawed human love, but with a perfect divine love that is so great they had to make up a new word to describe it. God loves you for who you are. He does not need you to be great. He just loves you. That is the beauty of God’s love. You do not have to impress Him. You do not have to entertain Him. He just wants to be with you. He is willing to do whatever it takes, in fact He already has. He already sent His only Son to die a horrible death so that He might be with you. God did this because He loves you! He loves you so much. Words cannot describe, thoughts cannot express, and songs cannot capture just how great God’s love for you really is. And if you would just come to Him…if you would just realize that you have wronged Him and just start heading home…He will not wait. He will not wait for you to get to the door. He is not preparing a lecture so when you get home He can tell you: “I told you so.” He is not looking to embarrass or humiliate you. If you would just go to Him…if you would just walk to Him…then HE would come running to you. He wants you to come home. He wants you to be with Him. He loves you. But are you willing to come back? You know by now that this world does not fully satisfy. You know the pleasures it offers are temporary at best…but are you willing to walk away from it? Are you ready for a better life? God is offering you His love…will you take it?
