4-12-09 Crazy Love – Easter

Big Idea: Love is greater than life. God’s love for us is so great that we would do anything . . . in to help us live abundant, joy filled lives.

Video clip: Passion of the Christ – Roman soldiers driving the nails into Jesus’s wrists and legs, and then turning him over and allowing his full weight to hold his body on those nails.

God came down in the person of Jesus to show us how to love. That makes sense to me. But God dying on the cross for me, that has confused me most of my life. The whole idea of God dying doesn’t seem right in my head. Does it really make sense to you?

The Bible says that “Jesus died to take away the sins of the world.” But it always seems like it would have been easier and make more sense, to me if God would have just asked people to repent and ask for forgiveness, and then forgive them, or wave a magic wand or his little finger or something, but that’s not the way it happened.

I went through seminary – 3 years full time. I thought for sure somebody would make it clear to me why God, in the person of Jesus had to die, but they didn’t. They never really talked about it. It was like everybody else knew why God had to die, but me. So I went along with it – understanding it, but not really understanding it at all. It was like a burr under the saddle of a horse – it was always chaffing at my mind.

I’ve now listened to more than 40 Easter messages in my life. The last two I’ve actually preached here, and none of them fully helped me understand the Easter message. Maybe I’m odd, but at the age of 43 I finally got it. I finally know what Easter means and why Jesus had died on the cross, and the thing that finally made me get Easter and Jesus’ death was life. It was life, and a strong and passionate pursuit of his love – a passionate pursuit of loving God and loving those around me – that’s what taught me the meaning of Easter.

So, I’d like to share in as simple a way as I can, what Easter means to me, and what that first Easter must of meant for Jesus and his disciples.

For me, my journey began when I realized that all of the Bible could be boiled down or summed up into two verses. Jesus was asked one time what the greatest two commandments were. He replied:

Mark 12:30-31 (NIV)
 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’¹ The second (he said, was like the first, and it) is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ And then Jesus something really important. He says, ” There is no commandment greater than these.”

This is important! Matthew sums up these two commandments this way:

Matthew 22:40 (NLT)
The entire law and all the demands of the prophets (that’s the whole Old Testament) are based on these two commandments.” If you don’t get some of the stories; if you don’t know how some of the Bible relates to you and your life, all you have to remember is that there are only two commands, and the rest of the Bible is meant to somehow explain these two commands.

Love God with all that you are and love others (those people you find yourself next to) as much as you love yourself.  All the rest of the Bible and all the rest of the commands in the Bible have to be seen through these two commands. God calls you and I to use this lens – the lens of love to see everything that he does and to see everything that you and I are called to be. God calls us to see life through the prospective of love. We make it a whole lot more complicated than this sometimes, but the Bible is really quite simple.

Maybe you’ve come here with a view of God as Judge – you know, the guy with the red pen who glares down from heaven; looking for you to mess up or make a mistake so that he mark you down.

Or maybe you understand God as a “Naughty or Nice” kind of God. On this column (Right), God keeps track of all the “Naughty” things that you’ve done, and on this side (Left), God keeps track of all the “Nice” or good things that you have done, and if the “Nice” column is higher than the “Naughty” side, then you get to go to heaven, but if not, well you get hell. But the crazy thing is you’re not really sure where you stand, because God seems to keep your score a secret – he keeps you guessing.

Or maybe you see God as the wind up God, who wound up the universe and let it go, and he’s, as Bette Midler says in her song, “God is watching us, God is watching us from a distance” God’s not really involved, he’s just watching us from a distance.

The problem with each of these ideas about God is they don’t fit the lens of God’s greatest commandments. If God loved you and me, he would not be this angry red mark God, and he would not leave your life to a scorecard that is based solely on works, and he wouldn’t just watch you from a distance, but never get involved in your life or mine. Each of these understanding about God doesn’t fit the lens of the greatest two commandments and it doesn’t fit God’s character.

After all, the Bible says in 1 John 4:8 that God is love. It’s the simplest and most pointed understanding of God in the Bible. It doesn’t say that God loves; it says that God is love!

In order to understand Easter, we must all be on the same page. God is love and you and I were created in the image of God (Genesis 1) and therefore it makes perfect sense that God would teach us that the greatest commandments are for us to Love him with all that we are and to love each other to the degree that we love our self. The whole basis of your life and mine is founded in love because the God who created us and the God who we serve is, at his very foundation, is “love”.

You and I are called to live in love, because God is love. Are we together?

So the question that I want to get at this morning and for Easter is, “What is love?”

Now, Love is a crazy word in the English language, because I can love all kinds of things.  I can love hamburgers. I can love watching the sun set. I can love my job. I can love money. I can love the smell of grapes in the fall. I can love the feel of my wife’s bare skin beneath my hand. I can love a good book. I could go on and on about the things that I love, but the greater question is what does it mean to love another person? What does that mean? And a bigger question, “What does it mean to love God?” And then, the Easter question is “What does it mean for God to love us?”

It’s best to start with God. We are told that God came down in the person of Jesus, and he came down to show us who he is, so that he and us could meet – so that we could know what he was like. And he came to reveal to us how we are to live life. Ultimately he came down to teach us what love is.

As a way of getting at this, I want to ask you a question. “Do any of you ever have perfect parents?” None of you? Mine neither! So our parents and our families and our teachers – all of whom are not perfect – were the ones who taught us what love is and taught us how to love – or, as it is in many cases, maybe taught us what love isn’t. The people that we model our lives after and the ones that we learn what Truth is, are the prominent people in our lives, right? We learn from our parents, from our teachers, from other family members, from coaches and co-workers.  We learn best by watching others and then we mimic what they do.

So with that in mind, let me ask you, how well did your parents teach you to love? How well did they do? What are you basing your answer on?

When it comes to love, if we didn’t have a model for what love really is, and if we didn’t have someone who could define what it means to love, it would get all whacked out. In America today as God and the Bible are not valued and read the idea of love gets messed up. Love becomes love making, which deteriorates into just sex, and then it deteriorates into sex without boundaries, and sex outside of marriage, and then sex at any age, and then sex with people of the same sex, and sex with more than one person. Love has to have a model or else it’s ideal and value deteriorates.

Jesus is our model. He is the model of love. He is God (point to the 3-segmented balloon). God is love. God came down in the person of Jesus to show us what love is and to establish a standard for what you and I were created for.

So let me lay the groundwork for you. Jesus is God (balloon). Jesus lives with all the benefits of heaven. He lives in heaven where every blessing and every goodness that he ever desired, is. Heaven is the perfect place – the perfect paradise, where there is no want, were there is complete peace, great love, and joy beyond measure. Everybody there is patient. Everybody is kind. It’s perfect! But God came down in the person of Jesus to war zone here on earth, where hell had invaded earth. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of good stuff – heavenly kind of stuff, but then there’s evil too, dark stuff. God created the world good – paradise – heaven on earth, but we in our free will turned away from God God’s love and his calling on our lives, and without God’s love all hell broke loose. Do you see it????

Jesus came down. He didn’t have to, but he came so that he could show us what love is. He came so that we could have a model for love. He came so that we wouldn’t get our love for hamburgers and our love for our spouse mixed up. Men, just love your wife like chopped meat – EH! That’s what love is, right? NO!

Jesus was the perfect model of love. He taught about love, and he modeled love, and on Good Friday he died for love. Near the time of his death, he had tens of thousands of people following him. He tried to rest, but people were so drawn to him that he was swamped. People tried to touch him because they were healed of their diseases if they but touched the hem of his rob. He taught from the sides of a mountain so all the people could see and hear him. Other times he went out in a boat and all the people stood along the sides of the shore to listen to him. People were drawn to God’s teaching in the person of Jesus – they were drawn to his love. They couldn’t get enough of it, and during one of those times before Jesus went to the cross he said this:

Matthew 16:24-27 (NKJV)
If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. ²⁵ For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

What does that mean? I said earlier that seminary and all the Easter messages that I’ve listened to over the years didn’t teach me about Jesus’ death. Life did. I’m thinking that you already understand this concept – especially if you have kids, but let me share it with you.

If you have kids, to what end would you go to show them how much you love them? What sacrifices do you make for them? What did you give up to raise them? For me, I gave up a lot of money. It costs a lot of money to raise kids. I gave lots of money to raise my kids and I did it eagerly because I love them. I gave up sports. I loved to play sports – beach volleyball, baseball, football, and I loved to sail my 16′ Hobbie Cat sailboat under strong winds on lake Michigan – I gave that up.  I love to woodwork, making fine things in my shop – gave most of that up. I love to hunt and fish and be in the out of doors, but when we had kids, there wasn’t much time to do all of those things and be a good husband and father, so I gave up much of what I loved to do up, because I loved my kids more.

In fact, and some of you have heard me say this before, but it bears repeating, If someone where holding a gun to the head of one of my children, and if I had a chance to take their place, I would do it in an instant. I would die for them, because I love them that much. That’s what love is. Love as God created it is stronger than life. Love as God created it is stronger than life.

Read the passage from The Shack – Sophia and Mack in the cave where Mack chooses right

That’s love rightly understood. The love of Easter is a love that is greater than life itself.

In the movie Robin Hood starring Kevin Kostner and Morgan Freeman, in the beginning of the movie the two are walking along the top of a wall talking about women – that’s what guys talk about, and Morgan Freeman says, “In the country where I come from the women are so beautiful that men there are willing to die for them.”  That’s the kind of love that you and I were created for – love that is greater than life.

We honor and salute our brave men and women who serve in the armed forces. We provide them special privileges and special honor because they love their country so much that they are willing to risk their lives and even die defending her. They are willing to give up their lives, so that our country and others might be free. And there is something within us that is moved by that kind of commitment and courage. That’s the kind of love that Jesus came to bring.

In the tragic event of 9/11 firemen and rescue workers rushed into the burning, bombed out shell of the Building Trade Center while thousands of others rushed out. Many of them died for their service. We honored them as men and women of courage and commitment.  They were willing to give up their lives, so that others might have life. When we see men or women who are willing to give up their lives for the lives of others, something that is deep within us is moved. It’s because we were created for that kind of love. That’s the kind of love that Jesus came to bring. That’s the love of heaven. That’s the love of God.

There were many things that were accomplished on the Cross that Easter morning when the tomb was found empty, but the greatest thing, is the model of love that Jesus gave us. God’s love for you and me, and God’s love for every human being is such that he was willing to die, he was willing to give his life, so that we might live, so that we might have life. That’s our model of what love is.

Jesus died to forgive our sins, Yes, but the reason why our sins were forgiven was because his love was so great. God in his great love would do anything in order for us to live, in order for us to have life – that’s the victory of Easter. Why did God have to die, it’s because that’s what love does. It sacrifices self before someone else. Love your neighbor as yourself.

John 3:16 For God so loved . . . .For God so loved the world For God so loved You and I that he gave his only Son (balloon – gave himself), so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Everything that God is and everything that God does, and everything that God calls us to be is about love. God’s love and character are fully displayed at Easter, when he reveals that his love is greater than life. That a part of God – the part that was reflected in Jesus, was willing to die for you and for I in order to express to us his love and in order to model for us what love looks like.

Sometimes we think that we have to get our lives in order before we can receive God’s love, but that’s not the case. Look at this:

Romans 5:8 (NIV)
⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this way: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God accepts us where we are at, but loves us so much that he refuses to allow us to stay in this place.

God loves you, and this morning I’d love it if you’d all pray to God with me as we seek to love him in return.