God Demonstrated His Love

Scripture: Romans 5:8

This message began with a skit from Lifeline Productions, “The Hole.” You need the transcript here to understand the opening of the message: Realist:      Help!! We’re trapped in this hole!

Scholar:         Calm down. We’re not trapped. I have everything figured out.

Realist:           What do you mean? It’s fifty feet down and the walls are too slick to climb out!

Scholar:         Yes, but I have books.          (picks up a tome)

Realist:           Books?

Scholar:         Yeah, on how to build elevators. (begins leafing through it) See here, chapter one, “Dig a deep shaft.”

Realist:           We’re in a deep shaft.

Scholar:         Yeah, that means we’re half way finished already.

Realist:           HELP!!          

Scholar:         See now here chapters two, three and four are all on doors, we don’t need those chapters…(Turns multiple pages)

Realist:           (Looks up) Hey, there’s someone up there.

Scholar:         Oh, we’re half way through this book already. (keep perusing)

Realist:           (Rope begins to appear and continues to lower as the skit progresses) Forget the book.  Look, there’s some one up there lowering a rope.

Scholar:         I don’t need any help! I can do this by myself! All I need is a large piston and a metal platform.

Realist:           I’m grabbing the rope. (begins reaching for it)

Scholar:         You’re a wimp!

Realist:           I’m not a wimp for accepting help when it’s the only way out.

Scholar:         Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s see now, we need three thousand gallons of oil. (looks around) Well, if we dig deeper,

Realist:           Grab the rope!           (grabs end of rope and extends it toward scholar)

Announcer: God doesn’t want you separated from Him. That’s why He’s reaching out to you. Have you taken his hand, or rope?

The best part of this verse is to see that God demonstrates his love! He doesn’t just talk about it. He demonstrates it!  You could say that the rope lowered down into the hole so those trapped guys could get out was a demonstration of love. The yell for help was a demonstration of need. The idea of building an elevator was a demonstration of pride, to put it nicely. We often think of love exclusively in terms of the good feelings that we have toward people with whom we are emotionally connected. But in reality, as I believe the Bible teaches, love is the act of caring for others, or being willing to do the right and wise thing about someone else’s predicament. Love is otherish, as I am fond of saying.

The guy calling for help wasn’t being otherish in that moment. He was stuck and he knew he needed help so he called out.  The guy reading the book wasn’t being otherish. He also was thinking of getting himself out of the hole. If the other guy just happened to be a co-beneficiary because he was there in the same predicament, well he’s just lucky to be around someone who appears to be so smart and self-sufficient. The guy with the book was filled with prideful assumptions that he could get them out without anybody else’s help. It was obviously ridiculous in that situation. The point of the skit is of course to get us all to see that any worldly philosophy or religion that proudly assumes that humans can save themselves and be on a good footing when they face the judgment of God is equally ridiculous. And the consequences of such a mistaken self-confidence are far worse than the merely physical death that brings us to face God at the throne of judgment.

But the rope; whoever lowered that rope cared about the guys at the bottom of the well. Even if he didn’t have any previous relationship with the hapless victims, his mere awareness that there were humans in need and that he could do something about it to save them was enough love to save them. It was an otherish thing to do. The rescuer may have been just doing his job, so, no additional benefit comes to him for rescuing these guys. He’s not going to get paid more. There was no negotiation as if he yelled down the hole and asked, “Hey, how much will you pay me to help you with this rope?”

I can imagine others who might have heard the cry for help, even seen the rope lying there, but made some excuse or other about why they wouldn’t, or maybe they even thought they couldn’t be the one to volunteer to lower the rope. Anyone who would refuse to do what was possible to rescue the victims would certainly not be demonstrating love for them. In fact, our natural human tendency to have compassion for people in such obvious physical need drives us to be the one to help. And drives us to despise anyone who wouldn’t offer to help as cruel and heartless. This whole thing brings to mind the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus made the most highly respected heroes of his culture, the Priest and the Levite, look like the unkindest of all people because they had reasons not to help. But the Samaritan, who would ordinarily be despised by the members of Jesus audience, is lifted up as someone you really have to admire.

Love in action is just that admirable. But now let’s talk about the God who most admirably demonstrated His love for us. He didn’t just happen by the scene of an accident and start scratching his head to think about whether or not He could help. He watched carefully as the people He personally created, whom He loved very much simply, walked away from him, turned their backs on him and got themselves into a lot of trouble by rejecting His will and wisdom. He could have turned his back on us right then and there. But God’s unfailing love continues. He actively provides for our needs even if we don’t recognize his blessing. He seems to work so quietly behind the scenes that it is easy for us to think that we do it all by ourselves.

So it will be good for us to make a list of many ways that God has demonstrated his love over the years. The list I made for you today comes from the Bible. But each of us can also make our own lists of the many blessings we have received from God over the short years of our own lives. In fact Kathy is doing that on her computer, journaling and writing out all the gifts and graces she can remember that our family has received from God as acts of his love for us. I encourage all of you to do something like that if it hadn’t already occurred to you. Think of the legacy of faith you could leave for your children to read so they never forget how much God loves them

As for the Bible, God demonstrated his love for us in the first place just by creating us. We didn’t just exist and then He happened to find us and decided we were worth loving. We were made by Him on purpose, to be loved by Him. We are made differently from all the other creatures on earth. About all the plants and animals God said, “Let there be such and such.” And they were created by the command of His Word. But about man he said, “Let us make man in our image” in Genesis chapter one and in chapter two it says, “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground.” That’s hands on work, not just a command. And it says, “He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” Think mouth to mouth resuscitation. That is the intimate imagery of the Bible. And God spoke to the man. The creation account doesn’t mention God speaking to the animals the way he spoke to Adam and Eve for loving relationship.  The creation account itself is a demonstration of God’s love for us.

Shortly thereafter, when Adam and Eve had sinned and had to begin to suffer the consequences of their disastrous, destructive choice, God’s next demonstration of love was this in 3:21, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and Eve and clothed them.” What a demonstration of love, to bless and protect them at the cost and sacrifice of the lesser animals who had to die so that their skins could be clothes to cover the shame of Adam and Eve.

God demonstrated His love in lots of big and little ways all through Scripture. You could probably name a bunch of them yourselves. I’m just going to hit a few more. God demonstrated his love and power fully when he saved Israel from Egyptian slavery and when he helped Israel to conquer Canaan. God demonstrated his love time and time again when he sent oppressors as they sinned and then deliverers when they repented. God demonstrated his love during the time of the kings by sending prophets who repeatedly warned Israel of her sins. When God allowed Babylon to take them into exile that was a demonstration of his love too. He was teaching them an important lesson. And the return from exile means they learned it, though not perfectly.

All through history, God gave his time and attention, his power and his blessings to care for his people. His love is proclaimed by his own proclamation such as when he spoke to Moses in the cleft of the rock in Exodus 34:6, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” And again in Deuteronomy 7:9, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.” That one is quoted a couple times more by later writers in the Old Testament.  In Zephaniah 3:17, she prophet said, “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

The Psalmists sang about God’s great and unfailing love in many songs. How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings. Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever. He sends from heaven and saves me, rebuking those who hotly pursue me— God sends forth his love and his faithfulness. Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me! But I pray to you, Lord, in the time of your favor; in your great love, O God, answer me with your sure salvation. But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. But that’s just talk.

How can we actually see the salvation of our God? As we all know, the top most superlative demonstration of God’s great love is that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. And he didn’t just take a bullet and die quickly. He allowed himself to be arrested by thugs, beaten, tried unfairly, tortured by mean spirited soldiers and nailed to a cross to die one of the most painful and excruciating deaths imaginable, all to demonstrate, “I love you this much.”

Romans 5:6 through 8 says, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  So that is exactly what Jesus did. He could do nothing greater. He did as much as he could possibly do to demonstrate his love. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Wow!

Eph. 2:3-5 says, “All of us also lived among them, [the sinners], at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”

We are so blessed by God’s love!  Listen. Titus 3:3-5 says, “At one time we were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

There’s a lot in 1 John. 3:1 says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”  4:7-12 says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

And finally we have this promise in Romans 8:38-39. “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

God demonstrates his love. When we believe what he has done that for us and we allow His Holy Spirit to fill us so that we feel the gratitude and joy of being a child of God, then we become the ongoing demonstration of His love as we faithfully reflect his character with worshipful thanksgiving for our salvation in Jesus who died for us while we were yet sinners. In the Spirit of God, we get to do the same thing. We are now called to demonstrate God’s love by loving others even while they are yet sinners.  This is what we are told in Colossians 3:12. “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”

So keep your eyes open for people who are in the pits of life or down in the dumps.  Keep your eyes open for folks who need a hand or a lift.  Be on the lookout for those to whom you can toss a life line by telling them this good news that God is reaching out to save them too. Give thanks to God and live with a thanks filled heart that he demonstrated his love for you, and be today’s demonstration of God’s love so the people you reach may believe the story that God died for them too, while they were yet sinners. To God be the glory! Amen.