Teaching Tuesday: What Are We Doing Here? - Experiencing God's Love

Series: What Are We Doing Here?
Sermon: Experiencing God's Love - Ephesians 3:14-21 (2.9.25)

My schedule got away from me the last several days, and I wasn’t able to dedicate the time I usually do to putting together original thoughts for this Tuesday Teaching. However, I wanted to share with you the below excerpt from pastor and author Dane Ortlund’s book Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners.

This is a beautiful book on discipleship of our Lord who loves us no matter what, and I recommend it highly for anyone who is interested in learning more about how not just to believe that God loves you but know and experience God’s love because, as Paul says in Ephesians 3, it dwells in your heart.

(There are a couple small sections of the book that present an aspect of God’s character and activity I think miss the mark, but overall it’s great.)

Ortlund is writing about the very section of Scripture we discussed last week - Ephesians 3:14-21 - and after examining the various aspects of the text, he writes about how some of us struggle to feel God’s love, and what to do about it:

“Some of us, no matter how much we try, no matter how much Bible we read, find the experience of God’s love elusive.

Some of us look at the evidence of our lives, mindful of the pain we’ve endured, and we do not know how to respond except with cold cynicism. The love of Christ? we wonder. Is this a joke? This all sounds nice in theory. But look at the wreckage of my life. I know deep down in my bones I was created to be a palace, magnificent and stately. But I’m a pile of bombed-out rubble given the way others have treated me, wronged me, victimized me. My life disproves the love of Christ.

If you are having thoughts like that as you hear of Christ’s love, I want you to know that you’re looking at the wrong life. Your life doesn’t disprove Christ’s love; his life proves it.

In heaven, the eternal Son of God lived in magnificence. But he became a man and, instead of ruling in glorious authority as one would expect of God-become-man, he was rejected and killed. His own life was reduced to bombed-out rubble. Why? So that he could sweep sinful you into his deepest heart and never let you go, having satisfied the Father’s righteous wrath toward you in his atoning death.

Your suffering does not define you. His does. You have endured pain involuntarily. He has endured pain voluntarily, for you. Your pain is meant to push you to flee to him where he endured what you deserve.

If Jesus himself was willing to journey down into the suffering of hell, you can bank everything on his love as you journey through your own suffering on your way up to heaven.

For others of you, it isn’t so much what you have received at the hands of others but your own sin and folly that cause you to doubt God’s love. You are a follower of Jesus and you keep messing up. You wonder when the reservoir of divine love is going to run dry.

Here’s what I say to you: Do you realize how God treats his children who mistreat his love?

He loves them all the fiercer.

It’s who he is. He is love. He is a fountain of affection. He is tireless, un-quitting, in his embrace. Let him love you all over again. Pick yourself up off the ground, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and allow his heart to plunge you into his oceanic love more deeply than he ever has before.”

TO KNOW HIM AND TO MAKE HIM KNOWN!

- Pastor Brady