Dr. Rodney Plunket

The actual emotion or feeling called love cannot be physically seen.  So how do you know it exists?  What causes you to trust that friends and family have in their hearts that deep and loyal affection for you that we call love?  What convinces you that love is there?  And how much of whatever it is does it take to convince you?

If you think about it for very long, I believe you will agree that to trust that someone loves you is a leap of faith.  No human eye has ever explored someone’s inner self.  And yet you trust that in that mysterious and unseen place a love for you resides.

And when you trust that love is there, your behavior toward that person is profoundly affected.  You even take risks because you trust that other person to honor a promise, fulfill a commitment.  You act on the basis of that trust.

You can’t see it.  It can’t be proven by any scientific method.  But countless decisions in life are based on your confidence in love.

I think you are convinced of another person’s love by things that your human senses can observe.  Your senses cannot directly observe love, but your senses can observe the evidences of love.  You can see the way a person treats you and the way she or he behaves in your presence.  You can hear a person’s words.  You can feel the way a person shakes your hand, pats you on the back, or gives you a hug.  And I think it is on the basis of those sensory experiences that we decide that someone really does love us.  So we take the leap of faith and trust in that persons’ love.

We have just sung several songs about God’s love.  How can God show us love?  No matter what a person’s view of God, one thing seems clear.  A God who could call into being all that our universe contains is an unbelievably awesome being.  To sense directly that kind of God would create such a sensory overload that fear would be aroused.  We could not get past the awesomeness of it to feel the love.  And the Bible actually records that kind of experience.  In Exodus 20 God allowed the people of Israel to experience some of God’s glory and actually to hear God speak.  What was the response?  The people said to their leader Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.”

So God is hidden.  We do not experience God the way we experience anyone else.  Our ears do not hear the sound of God’s voice.  Our eyes do not see God.  We cannot physically feel God’s touch like we feel the touch of a friend or a loved one.

So how can anyone believe that God loves him or her?  Not only can we not see God’s inner person, we cannot see God at all.  What evidence can we have of God’s love?

Well, once a person realizes that nothing comes from nothing and that there must have been a powerful and creative force behind all the wonders in our world, then it is easy to look around and see all the signs of that Creator’s love.  Creation provides us with food to eat, water to drink, and air to breathe.  Creation provides us with more beauty than we will ever take in.  Yes, creation is a testimony to our Creator’s love.

But the Bible teaches that there is an evidence of God’s love that is even greater than creation.  That evidence is wonderfully described in one verse in a book called the Gospel According to John.  It is one of the most famous verses in the entire Bible.  John (Jn) 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

God’s love for us is so great that God’s demonstration of love is the most extravagant demonstration ever.  God gave us Jesus, and the Bible tells us that in Jesus is the very fullness of God (Colossians 2:9).  God gave us Jesus, and Jesus died to show us how much God loved us.

Yes, it’s true that God gave us Jesus to save us from our sins.  But that can sound so transactional; that can sound like doing business or something.  We did owe an impossible debt, and God did pay it; that’s true.  We needed a just way to be made right with God, and God made us right with God in Jesus; that’s true too.

But we must never forget that one of the main reasons God gave us Jesus is so we would know how radical God’s love for us really is.  God gave for us God’s one and only Son.  God gave for us a person that there is only one of.  God gave us Jesus in whom is the very fullness of God.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”

As I said earlier, that statement is found in the Gospel According to John.  And in that same book are several statements that reveal the closeness that exists between God the Father and God’s Son Jesus.  In Jn 1:1-3 it is made clear that Jesus was with God the Father in the beginning when the creation of the world took place.  God and Jesus are so close that they created the world together.

In Jn 1:18 we read, “No one has ever seen God.  It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”  Here we learn that Jesus is so “close to the Father’s heart” that Jesus can make God known.  He can reveal God.  Jesus can demonstrate what God is like.  That is how close they are.

In Jn 10:30 Jesus says, “The Father and I are one.”  And in Jn 17 Jesus twice refers to the fact that He and God the Father are one (verses 11 & 21).  Jesus is so close to God that Jesus is one with God.

And the Gospel According to John is not the only source for the revelation of the closeness between God the Father and God’s Son Jesus.  I have already alluded to Colossians 2:9 where another writer, Paul, says of Christ, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”  God’s divine fullness lives inside the body of Jesus.

Feel the closeness between God the Father and Jesus Christ God’s Son.  They were in the beginning together making creation happen.  Jesus is close to God’s heart.  They are one.  In Jesus “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

What does this mean?  What is God telling us by giving us someone who is so close to God, so much like God, so filled with God’s fullness?

This may sound radical, but I think God is saying that if this world and the people in it could survive without my life-sustaining presence and power, I would die myself so you would know how much I love you and the world that I made.

God has shown us God’s love.  I want us to reflect on God’s love right now.  We want to sing a couple of songs about the giving of Christ Jesus for us.  Then we will take the Lord’s Supper.  If you are a guest, you are welcomed to partake.  But whether you partake or not, please allow your mind to be captivated by the thought of a God who loves you this much:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”

There is a story of a swing bridge.  For most of the day that swing bridge faced up and down the river to allow boats to pass.  But two or three times a day that bridge had to be turned to connect to the railroad tracks on either side of the river so that trains could cross.

It was near twilight when the switchman in the control shack saw the lights of the day’s last train coming toward the river.  He waited until the prescribed location was reached, and then he adjusted all the switches to reposition the bridge, but the locking mechanism malfunctioned.  Without the bridge locked into position it would wobble, and the train would fall off the bridge and crash into the river.  This train was a passenger train, loaded with people.

So the switchman ran across to the opposite side of the bridge where there was a manual locking lever.  He got there in time, and pulled the lever into position.  But he would have to hold it in that locked position until the train traveled all the way across.

Just then he heard a sound that made his blood run cold.  “Daddy, where are you?”  His four-year-old son was crossing the bridge to look for him.  The man’s first impulse was to let go of the lever and to run to his son, because he knew his little boy could not outrun the train.  But if he let got of the lever, all of those passengers would plunge into the river and die.

He had only a moment to make his decision.  The train sped safely and swiftly on its way, and no one aboard was even aware of the tiny broken body thrown mercilessly into the river by the onrushing train.  Nor were they aware of the pitiful figure of the sobbing man, still clinging tightly to the locking lever long after the train had passed.  They did not see him walking home more slowly than he had ever walked to tell his wife how their son had brutally died.

I saw a movie version of that story one time.  I hated it.  I never want to see it again.  It was just too painful to watch.  But it only touches what God and Jesus did for us.

The son in the bridge story had no part to play in the decision.  His father made the decision, and it cost the son his life.  Jesus had a choice.  And Jesus still said, yes.  He left the domain of God with all the love that existed between Himself and the Father.  He left that domain and lived with ridicule and poverty.  And He died, because of His love for the world and the lost people in it.

The father in the bridge story made his painful decision in a moment.  God made the decision to send Jesus millennia before God actually sent Him.  God watched for millennia as people made a bigger and bigger mess of God’s wonderful creation.  God watched the pain and suffering that people brought into the world, the pain and suffering that then multiplied and multiplied and multiplied again.  God watched as human lust and pride caused people to sin against others and against God’s world.  God watched all of that, and still loved us.  God still gave us Jesus in spite of all the sin that reigned within the human heart.