DO YOU BELIEVE THAT I (GOD) LOVE YOU?
Pastor Daniel J. Little - The Landmark Church, Binghamton, NY
adfontes.djl@gmail.com
2 Corinthians 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
When Paul writes saying For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, “grace” means God’s always present “conscious will” to love you. God’s will to love you is such an all pervasive influence that you cannot find a place on the earth where there is no sign of it. So pervasive, so limitless is God’s grace that any direction you attempt to run from it you are still running into it; run as fast as you will, the borders of God’s love simply expand under your feet at a faster rate than you can run. Romans 5:20 … where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
Romans 5:20 (Amplified Bible) But where sin increased and abounded, grace (God’s unmerited favor) has surpassed it and increased the more and super-abounded,
The Apostle Paul says that this grace is not theoretical but as real as the unseen air we breathe. Grace is the atmosphere of spiritual reality that God means for us to experience and thrive in.
It seems to me that Paul bends right down where we are seated and gets very close to our faces and says; “…for your sake Jesus became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”
Paul often speaks of this environment of wealth.
• Romans 2:4 the riches of God’s goodness that leads to repentance?
• Ephesians 1:7 we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;
• Ephesians 1:18 … that you may know …the riches of the glory.
• Ephesians 3:8 … preach … the unsearchable riches of Christ;
• Colossians 1:27 that God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
• 1 Timothy 6:17 Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches , but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy; KJV
What ever riches Jesus laid down when He took on our flesh and human experience, those riches are for us. For our sake he laid them down and now they are safely kept in God’s presence as an inexhaustible supply for all our needs.
Philippians 4:19 But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
If we can discover the nature of Jesus’ poverty we can then determine the nature of our riches in glory through Jesus.
Jesus poverty did not begin in the power department. He did all kinds of very powerful and miraculous. He was able to breathe this power upon His disciple that they might go out and use it in His name.
The poverty that Jesus experienced in becoming one of us He gave up His own eternal and unbroken and immediate fellowship in the love of God. For all eternity His relationship with God was more immediate than the relationship between your thumb and index finger, but when He became flesh for our sake that immediacy was greatly hindered.
The mere weight of his flesh dulled His sense of God just as it does with us. His hunger and thirst, the heat and cold, the weariness of body, all these things that cloud our direct experience of God also clouded His direct awareness of God. That is how deeply He entered into the poverty of our experience. This poverty became complete as He hung on the cross.
At the cross He refused to exercise His power option. He laid it down for our sake.
Matthew 26:53 Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?"
He stilled storms, walked on water, healed the sick and raised the dead, summoned fish to bring a gold coin for taxes, but when the temple guard came to arrest Him in the Garden He laid His power aside and became weak and docile as a lamb, … “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:8-9)
Only by laying down His wealth could we be saved and the Scriptures be fulfilled.
In the midst of overwhelming pain and shock and struggling with fading strength to even breathe, He came to the place where He had no more sense of God’s fellowship whatever. So complete was this poverty that He cried out from the cross, Matthew 27:46 "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
But out of this utter poverty comes this act of raw faith when with His last breath Jesus called out with a loud voice; Luke 23:46 … "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit !"
These words did not come from feelings. He had no interior sense of God’s presence. His poverty was complete. These are words of raw faith, the kind that says, I feel totally lost, but I believe that God knows where I am.
If the cross is where Jesus laid down His wealth for our sakes, where did His wealth come from in the first place?
John’s Gospel, for example, opens up much as the book of Genesis begins, by telling us that Jesus is the Creator of all things and therefore all things are His. John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Think what this means. It means that no one is going to “wow” Jesus by their earthly power, authority or position, or money. It puts the unknown native of some little remote village in Northeast India on a level plane with the CEO of Apple Computers.
In the church world it puts the least known faithful pastor in the mountains of mountain Lam Dong Province, Vietnam on the same plane as the pastor who is characterized as having the largest or fastest growing or most dynamic church in America. In fact, Jesus says that those who appear least (least as in last), may actually be first.
Creation also means that Jesus owns all the silver, gold, diamonds, pearls, and mineral resources, gas, oil, coal that might be found on the earth or under the sea (or in all the billions of galaxies each with their billions upon billions of stars and planets and moons. They all belong to Him.
That means there is no use trying to impress God by your bank accounts, IRAs or the size of your home. He owns Galaxies and is no more impressed with a 100 million $$ mansion on Rodeo Drive in Hollywood than with a grass hut along a dirt path in interior of Papua New Guinea.
The Palmist David says that when he considers the wealth of God he is amazed that God is aware of us at all; Psalms 8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
So if power and money and possessions and credentials don’t impress God then what does?
The answer is that we impress God the same way an infant impresses her mother. The sound of her cry, the sight of her complete dependence evokes a selfless love in her mother that is beyond explanation, even triggering a physiological response that turns on the production of milk so the mother can share her very life with her child.
This is one of the richest earthly examples of the infinite and amazing way that God feels about us that I know.
God spoke long ago to us through the prophet Isaiah saying;
Isaiah 49:15 "Can a mother forget the infant at her breast, walk away from the baby she bore? But even if mothers forget, I’d never forget you — never. (MsgB)
What God is saying is; “The idea of a mother forgetting to love her child is almost unheard of, but it can NEVER happen between you and Me. I will NEVER forget to love you—never!
So God is not moved by our power or wealth or our rugged individualism, but He is deeply moved by our weakness and cannot help but respond in overwhelming love when we look to Him for help. Our call for His help causes the milk of His love to gush forth in torrents of mercy.
The simplicity of this very deep truth is why the Gospel as it was preached by the Apostles and the early church is so simple.
• Acts 2:21 … everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved .’
and then later in the same message…
• Acts 2:38 Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The only reason the Gospel is more complicated than that now is that we (not God) have made it more complicated. It is as simple as that.
Some 400 years ago a thirty-four-year-old woman named Marjory Kemp had a deep feeling of not counting. She was a widow and in that day in England being a widow meant have no voice, no significance. She felt that what she did was of little use and her prayers were quite without power. It was during this dark period of her life the Lord spoke comfort to her saying; “More pleasing to me than all your prayers, sacrifices, and good works is that you would believe that I love you.”
God says the same to you.
Once you believe and surrender yourself to the Lord’s love it changes your life. You actually dare to leave the old familiar life-style because His love makes you fearless. It no longer makes a difference who doesn’t love you, who doesn’t believe in you, or who doesn’t see your worth, because you live and abide in the overpowering sense that even if your own mother didn’t love you, God loves you and will never forget to remember you.
We don’t have any money-rich folks coming to this church (unless some of you are really hiding it well), but that doesn’t mean some of you are not working your head off hoping to get money and power because you think they will fill your life with significance and meaning. Just in case you don’t know, Jesus says money and power will not do this for you. Luke 12:15 "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
Maybe money and power are not on your list. Maybe you are hoping in the next relationship—a new love that will save you from the feeling that you are disconnected and missing out on life. Fill in the blank anyway you want— the next raise, the next job, the next car, your upcoming retirement in Arizona, your graduation from college, your new husband or wife, and so on.
God looks at any such list and says you know what, some of these things are morally wrong and therefore harmful, most of them are harmless enough, and some of them (like a good wife or husband) are actually good, but if you are looking to any of these things to give ultimate meaning and purpose you are asking them to bear a weight that were not designed for. They will shatter under the load and you will be hurt. For ultimate meaning and purpose you have but one viable option. You need the ultimate Savior.
How do you break out of the cycle of disappointment that results from misplaced hope? You go to the cross where you will see the ultimate proof of the reality of Christ’s love. Nothing clears a believer’s thinking like going to the cross.
The cross is the place where Jesus gave up the last portion His own eternal and unbroken and immediate fellowship in order to suffer in faith alone, believing that He was loved, believing that He would take up His life again on the third day just as God had promised.
The cross becomes the door through which you enter into the reality of His love, the place where you begin to find the riches that Jesus has laid down and put in store for you.
And so we come to the communion table as Jesus has instructed,
1 Corinthians 11:26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
We look upon our dying Savior in His final moment of absolute poverty and simply say; Lord, I believe you love me.
It is through Your willful embrace of poverty for my sake that I willfully embrace the wealth of a new life in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Help me.”
