The woman in Luke chapter 13, before she opened her mouth, could be comforted to know that the Lord knew her condition and knew what she needed.
The sun is still shining, and I am counting on it.
Lord, the faces of speakers can change, but Your work continues. Lord, we pray not only that You will be with us, but that You also can find room to work in us and among us. Open our eyes so we can better appreciate Your love to us.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Would you turn your Bible to Ephesians chapter 3? Ephesians 3. I will read from verses 14 through 19.
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man;
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
This morning, I would like to talk about God’s love. But God’s love is so big. It is from eternity to eternity. God’s love to us, according to Paul, is something beyond comprehension, beyond our human reasoning.
Then what is the use of studying something that cannot be known? What is the point of measuring the immeasurable? This job of explaining God’s love to us puts Paul on his knees.
Let us study it. In Ephesians 3:16, he enlists the help of the Holy Spirit to enlighten our understanding. At the same time, Paul had brought Jews and Gentiles together into the church. Jews and Gentiles were natural enemies to each other.
We see an urgent need to know the love of God. Only the Holy Spirit can empower us to live in harmony and unity in the church.
The love of God itself is beyond any computation and cannot be wholly measured. Nevertheless, it is our job to know as much as we can about it and to receive as much of it as we possibly can contain.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, then the measure of Christ can grow and mature in our lives.
The problem is, Christians need to include the fact that we do not always acknowledge God’s love. How often have we thought about it? Isn’t it true?
We normally spend time thinking about our activities, our problems. Yet the most important necessity of a Christian is to know God’s love to us and spend time meditating on it.
This way, we may respond to it with a grateful heart in living our lives.
My knowledge of God’s love is rather limited, as you will find out in a minute. But it is like a large picture puzzle. I bring a few pieces of the puzzle today. Some other people will bring a few more pieces next time. Together, we may have a better understanding of God’s love.
God’s love is multidimensional. We humans do not use these terms. If we tell our loved ones that our love to them is four-dimensional, you poor fellow—you already know you are square.
Now, if you are around me, I will follow the sequence of the Chinese Bible, which describes God’s love in the order of length, width, height, and depth.
In my childhood, I had the opportunity to attend Sunday school in China. There was one Sunday school teacher. She could tell Bible stories in vivid color. I liked to sit in her class.
But unfortunately, my name was on her list of students for whom she had a burden for their souls.
At that time, most Chinese did not have access to a telephone. So it was customary that visitors would show up at the door unannounced.
My Sunday school teacher visited me often, perhaps too often. Her excuse was that she was in our neighborhood. In addition, she would not leave unless I prayed with her. I did not have a prayer life back then, but what would you do to get rid of her under the circumstances?
Because of her Christian faith, she was put in jail for over twenty years. Later, she had an opportunity to visit America and ran into my mother in California.
The first thing she asked my mother was, “Is he not saved?” She went on to tell my mother that she had been praying all the years for me while she was in jail.
That touched me. Somebody cared to save my soul, and was willing to spend twenty years praying for me.
God just does not give up on me. He will not leave me alone. God’s love is long.
I have a mother who loved the Lord. She was not able to send her son to study abroad. Thank God, He opened another channel. But she prayed for me every day while I was in college.
I fast-forward. When our children went to college, I thought I would emulate my mother by praying for them. I found out four years is a really long time—especially on days when I did not feel like talking with God.
I attended a conference one time, and one of the sessions was devoted to nonbelievers, the so-called evangelistic or gospel meeting.
Toward the end of this session, the speaker tried to explain what he would do. He said that, when he finished his talk, he was going to ask anybody who accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord to come to the front.
Before he had the chance to finish the sentence, a man jumped out from his seat.
We later were able to talk to this man. “Why did you stand up prematurely?”
“Oh,” he explained, “I was a cook, a chef, who had to work on weekends. The last time I heard an altar call was in Hong Kong twenty-six years ago, and I never heard a second altar call until now.”
So, to make sure he would not miss this opportunity, he had already decided to accept Jesus as his personal Savior. He jumped the gun, so to speak, to receive Jesus into his heart.
God patiently waited for him. Oh, this is God’s love. It is long.
Now, let us talk about the width of God’s love.
John 3:16: God so loved the world. This includes people of every tongue, tribe, and nation. God gave us His only begotten Son to die on the cross. Jesus has already paid the debt of our sin, so whoever receives Him will have everlasting life.
The Bible also says that God will freely, or broadly, pardon. So what does it mean?
It means if you confess your sins, God will not keep a record of your past sins, no matter how big they turn out to be, no matter how your conscience accuses you. You can come to the Lord as you are. He wants to lead you away from sin.
God broadly pardons.
A rich man was reading the story of the prodigal son in the Gospel according to Luke chapter 15. He was so impressed that he wished to have a picture of the story for his house.
But unfortunately, he could not find one in the market. So he decided to consult an artist. Perhaps the artist could capture the story on canvas.
So he told the artist, “Money will not be a problem here, but can you capture the story in a painting?”
The artist said, “I am not a Christian. Just tell me what you want. What do you need to put in the drawing?”
The rich man was not sure himself, so he decided to leave his Bible with the artist. “Make sure you read the story before you start painting. And take your time. Money is not the issue here,” he reassured the artist.
So they agreed for the rich man to review the picture in two months. Two months later, the rich man returned to the studio.
“Have you finished the painting?”
“Yes, it is finished, but it is in the studio in the back. You can go there now, and I will join you in a little while.”
So the rich man went to the back. He was shocked, because the picture did not resemble anything he expected.
The painter drew an old man’s head. To be exact, it was the back view of an old man’s head with broad shoulders. He could not figure out the meaning of the picture. “What has that got to do with the prodigal son?”
When the artist appeared, he asked, “What is the meaning of this picture?”
The artist asked him in return, “Do you want the picture or not?”
He said, “I just want an explanation. What story are you working on? I asked you to paint the story of a prodigal son, and you drew an old man. What does it mean?”
The artist said, “I told you, I am not a Christian. So I read the story carefully and repeatedly. But, by the way, do you want the picture or not? If you do, you can take it home. If you do not, take it home anyway, because I am not going to change anything. This is how this picture will stand.”
The rich man said, “I just want you to explain to me why you drew this picture this way.”
The artist said, “Okay, I will explain, but I am not going to change anything. But I will explain to you: you Christians got it all confused.”
This statement made the rich man further confused.
He said, “When I read the story, I did not get the picture that it is the story of a son. I got the picture that it is the story of the father.”
“To me, this prodigal is a worthless person. He took the inheritance and squandered it and spent it all. If he were thinking of coming back home, I am going to kick him out. But where are you going to find a father like this?”
“Who will be anxiously waiting for the return of his wayward son, day in and day out?”
“When the prodigal son will return home, the son knows it. But the father had no clue about the timing of it. But how come he spotted the son when the son first appeared on the horizon?”
“So my guess is that he must have been waiting for him the whole day, every day. That is why I drew the picture of an old man waiting anxiously.”
“Even so, did you see a path in the middle of the picture?”
The rich man put on his glasses and looked carefully. “Yes, yes, I see it.”
“Did you see there is a figure next to the path?”
“Yes, I see it.”
“That is the prodigal son. That is him.”
To the artist, it is not about the son. It is about the love of a father.
I do not know whether you agree with him or not, but it is true sometimes. We pay too much attention to this prodigal son and neglect the love of the One who loves sinners.
Maybe all the attention we put into the best seat in the house is with the wish that they may return to worship with us again. Sometimes we become careless and wasteful of our Father’s love.
So I say now, God’s love is wide.
What about height?
My colleague and her husband are animal lovers. One time, I came to visit. Once we stepped into the house, they asked us if we would like to meet their new family members.
I took a peek through the window. There were four Dobermans in the open truck. Maybe I was hallucinating. All I saw was that they were baring their teeth at me in slow motion.
None of my family members volunteered to greet our canine guests. So I asked my colleague, “What did you do when you and your husband were at work? What happened to your poor cats in case there was a fight?”
“Oh, there is no problem. All the cats know the high places in the house. If it happens outside the house, they know how to climb trees and sit calmly on the branch. The dogs may be mad and charge the cats. The cats will ignore them, or say something like this: ‘If you want, you can come up here.’”
Ephesians chapter 2 says not only that we died with Christ; we also rose with Him, and He set us in heavenly places. That is a high place.
But sometimes God wants us to see things from His point of view.
Once I was standing in front of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, before the events of September 11. I was in awe of their height. If you were a hat, you had better hold on to it. You could easily lose it.
Those skyscrapers were so tall. Then our plane flew over New York City, and you see, “Ah, that is where Americans put their chopsticks.”
Sometimes we see things as so important. You have to see them from God’s point of view. Maybe they are only seemingly important on earth.
Some of us think heaven is too far away. Maybe you have acrophobia, fear of heights.
You can just think of Jesus. Like hymn 285 says, “Where Jesus is, ’tis heaven there.”
In John chapter 11, Jesus and the disciples went to Bethany. Martha thought they came too late to heal Lazarus.
But Jesus said, “Your brother will rise,” and Martha thought He must be referring to the last day. So she said, “Yes, he will rise in the last day.”
And Jesus explained to her, “You know why Lazarus can rise in the last day? Because I will be there. I am the Lord of resurrection and life. But I am here now. You do not have to wait.”
We know the rest of the story.
A bird can stretch its wings and fly. But America chose the eagle as its emblem. Why an eagle? Because a little bird can fly, but only so high.
An eagle can fly to the sky in no time. So, flying with one wing of faith and another wing of hope, we can get there.
God’s love is high.
And what about depth?
Here on the East Coast, we have the Atlantic Ocean. On weekends, people like to go to the beach.
Suppose we go out, leaving the shore farther and farther away. How much water is beneath you, we may not know. But the important thing is, you know you are in the water.
It is hard for us—if not impossible—to measure God’s love in a quantitative sense. But we know we are in God’s love for sure. That is the important part.
I thought the Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the water. It is about seven miles deep. That is deep.
If it were possible to put Mount Everest into the Mariana Trench, you would still have more than a mile of water above the peak. That is how deep the thing is. But sometimes I feel God’s love is deeper than that.
Some years ago, there was a teacher from Taiwan who came to Richmond in October. Now, being a teacher, it is difficult to take time off in the middle of the school year.
Her daughter, who was attending a local school here, did something, and the mother felt she had to come talk to her face to face.
But the daughter felt afraid of talking to her mother, so she sneaked out the back door and disappeared.
This lady had no friends in Richmond. Somebody told her there was a Chinese Christian in town. That is how I met her.
I took her to all the places where her daughter might be found. No luck.
Then it was getting dark, so I told her, “Maybe we will quit for the day and continue tomorrow. But before we go home, let us stop by the police station and file a report for a missing person.”
It turned out she was over eighteen, so we could not file her as a missing person. But the policeman was very kind. “If we hear anything, we will give you a call.” So I left my telephone number with them.
In the middle of the night, the phone rang. They found her roaming aimlessly on I-64.
And the worst thing that could happen happened. She was beaten up and ended up in the emergency room at MCV Hospital.
So I went to pick up the mother. I could not recognize her. While we were asleep, she had apparently been crying nonstop. Her face was all swollen.
Have you ever met a parent with a missing child? They have agony written all over their face.
The mother was so eager to see her daughter again. When we arrived, we found out that the daughter had left a note at the front desk. She did not want to see her mother.
So what did we do now?
So I became the go-between. I will never forget.
The mother told me—she told me in no uncertain terms—“Tell her, no matter what has happened, I still love her.”
So I went to the daughter. “Okay, you do not need to go through all this drama. Your mother already loves you unconditionally. No matter what happened, she still loves you.”
I do not know anybody here today who has not talked to God for a while. God wants me to pass this message to you: no matter what happened before, He still loves you unconditionally.
No matter what happened, He still loves you unconditionally.
Let us pray.
Lord, You know our condition, and You know us. We thank You that You choose not to focus on our imperfection.
What You do focus on is our faith, submission, and obedience, no matter how little they are.
You have always been kind and affectionate to all the believers, right down to the present. And we thank You.
In Jesus’ name.