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Yours, Lord, is a pursuing love. Come, pursue us now.

We invite you in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

 

 

This morning we begin a new sermon series and with this series of messages we join with the church all around the world in observing a season that we know as Lent, a period of preparation in which we ready our interiors to celebrate Good Friday and Easter and the historical events that they point to—the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 

There were many moments of profound significance in the life and ministry of Jesus on earth: the sermon on the mount, the transfiguration, feeding the five thousand, walking on water, raising Lazarus from the dead, the triumphal entry, washing the disciples’ feet, the miraculous catch of fish.

 

But it is not wash towels that we wear around our necks as Christians or palm branches that adorn the tops of our buildings or fish nets that we hang in the back of the sanctuary as the focal point of our worship.

 

Instead, it’s the cross—the instrument of death on which Jesus’ life came to an end—that has become the universal symbol of Jesus’ ministry and of those who are his followers.

 

From the moment that it took place, Jesus’ followers have placed the greatest significance in his death. According to followers of Christ, the most important part of his life—even more important than the way that it began—was the way that it came to an end. In this series called Why Did He Die?, we’ll be exploring why that is.

 

For two thousand years, the church has been saying that Jesus died for our sins.

 

But that isn’t true. Did I get your attention? Listen carefully to this. The church has been saying that Jesus died for our sins. But that isn’t true. At least, it is not the ultimate thing that is true about why Jesus died on the cross.

 

To say that it is would be like saying that the most important part of a wedding was signing the marriage license after the ceremony, or the most important part of your family vacation was paying for the gas. It’s true. Without a license, you are not married, and without fuel, you are going nowhere. But there is so much more.

 

In the words of the famous theologian, Inigo Montoya: “Let me 'splain…. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

 

The ultimate reason that Jesus came and died was to make us right with God. In order to do that, Jesus had to pay the penalty for our sin with his life. Absolutely. Sin is of great consequence and its penalty had to be paid. But he came and laid down his life because God wants to be in relationship with us. That is why the problem of sin needed to be addressed.

 

In I Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 10, Paul says, “God did not appoint us to suffer his anger, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that we may live together with him.” The cross shows the lengths that God will go to be in relationship with us.

 

* * *

 

Twenty five years ago this April, I sat down in church next to a woman that I’d never seen before. She was about my age and she was by herself and she was very cute. This was a good thing.

 

While I was looking down at my bulletin as the service began, she looked up at the pastor who was leading the service. He looked back at her, saw that she was sitting next to me, and he winked.

 

After the service, we introduced ourselves. Her name was Sharon Wright. I thought that was fitting for someone who loved puns that God would bring into my life Miss Wright. She caught my eye from the moment that we sat down together, and I was hoping that I would get to see more of her.

 

And I did. In the providence of God, the next several times that I came to church, I would come around the corner and there she would be.

 

And then I decided to be intentional about running into her. After a Missions event at our church at which we ran into each other once again, I asked her if we could go grab some ice cream with a couple of friends of mine.

 

That went well, so now it was time for us to have some time on our own to begin to get to know each other. So I asked her if we could grab a Coke at Frisch’s. What fun it was for us to begin to get to know each other and to take turns asking and answering questions.

 

I know that some of you have heard the story of how attentively Sharon was listening to me as she asked a question, and if you know Sharon at all, you know that the gift of listening is one of her great spiritual and relational gifts. She asked me a question and then she reached for her Coke, lifted it to her mouth, and the straw went straight up her nose! I completely ignored it and acted like I hadn’t seen it which, by the way, is a very helpful gift to have if your occupation is that of being a preacher. You’d be surprised what you can see from up here!

 

As spring rounded into summer, we began to see more and more of each other, and soon we really began to fall for one another. Somewhere in the middle of the summer came our first kiss.

 

But there was a problem. Each day that passed, each day that drew us closer together, also brought us closer to August when I was leaving Cincinnati to move to the north shore in Massachusetts to begin seminary at Gordon-Conwell. That was not a good thing.

 

By the time August came around, we had become really close. But I knew myself. I knew my track record from past experience. So just before I left, with great sensitivity, I told Sharon that I was very present-minded and would probably just get caught up in my classes once I got to seminary and probably wouldn’t think about her much once I got there. That went over well!

 

But then I got there. And I found that I was thinking about her all the time. And I really wanted to be with her.

 

But there was a problem. It was a 934 mile long problem, to be precise. That was the distance between the two of us.

 

We still did everything that we could to connect. Every Friday night in those pre-email, pre-cellphone days, I would go down to the post office and step into the phone booth and give her a call. Our record was a night when some of the guys from my floor after I’d been talking to Sharon for a while walked out of the door past me. I waved goodbye to them. They went to the next town over and had dinner together and then came back and I was still talking. And then I found out that they had gone to dinner and a movie! I still have the receipt from that one. That was a three hour and fifty nine minute phone call.

 

You may have seen the cartoon strip Pearls Before Swine a couple of weeks ago: Two dogs are on leashes that keep them just a few feet apart. Did some of you see this? One strains against the chain, throws his arms wide, and says, “Hold me. Hold me. Hold me. Hold me. Hold me. Hold me.” And the other one, looking back, straining against her chain, throwing her arms wide, says, “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” And then in the last frame, they both have their arms by their sides and the first one says, “Curse these long-distance relationships.”

 

It was great to be able to talk with her. But it still wasn’t satisfactory. I wanted to be with her.

 

So as soon as the very first break of a few days came in my schedule, I filled my car with gas, I threw in a bunch of tapes to listen to and some Mint Milanos to enjoy, and I headed out of town. Across Massachusetts and down through Connecticut and across the southern part of New York, stopping only twice—just long enough to get out of the car, to refill it with gas, to jump rope a little bit to get the circulation going in my body again—and then back into the car and on my way all the way across the hills of Pennsylvania, down across the flats of Ohio and finally to Cincinnati and standing there at her doorstep thirteen hours and 45 minutes later numb, weary and happy as a clam because we were together.

 

It’s amazing the lengths that you’ll go to to be with one you love. But that’s nothing compared to what God went through to close the distance between Himself and us, His beloved. Consider what God was willing to go through to be in relationship with us.

 

I’d like to invite you to turn, if you would please, to page 1832 in your pew Bible: Colossians chapter 1 verses 19 to 22. Colossians chapter 1 starting in verse 19:

 

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him [that is, in Jesus Christ], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

 

Now Paul begins this section by describing the incarnation, telling us that God was so eager to be in relationship with us, so eager to close the distance between earth and heaven, that He took on human form and was born into this world so that we could see Him and hold Him and walk with Him. “God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in him,” Paul tells us in verse 19. God came to where we were, and He became one of us.

 

But that wasn’t all.

 

The Bible teaches us that it is not only “physical” distance in a sense—the gap between heaven and earth—that separates man from God and God from man. There is also spiritual distance.

 

In Isaiah 59 it says, “Your iniquities [your wrongdoing] have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”

 

It’s not just the gap between heaven and earth that God had to overcome. There is also the problem of sin: the distance between the life to which He has called us and for which He has made us—the life with Him—and the life we actually live, a life stained throughout by sin.

 

Now, I think that we tend to think of sin in impersonal terms: falling short of some standard, or breaking a rule on some list.

 

But the idea of sin is exceedingly personal in the Scriptures. Sometimes we forget. God is a person, as much a person as your husband or your daughter or your next door neighbor. And if God is a person, then that means our sin is a personal offense.

 

Sin is a rejection of God and His desires for us. It is rebellion against God and His loving purposes for us. It is opposing God, defying God, dismissing God.

 

When we sin, we hurt a person: the person of God. It not only offends His holy standard, it hurts His heart just as it hurts the hearts of anyone we love whenever we are selfish or unkind or greedy or self-serving or unloving.

 

In the spiritual realm, there are no impersonal infractions. Sin is always a personal foul.

 

That’s why David, when he is unfaithful, says to God in Psalm 51: “Against you God, only you, I have sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.”

 

He’s not saying that he hasn’t wronged Bathsheba or Michal or Uriah or a host of others including himself. It means his wrong against God is even far greater still.

 

God made us for relationship with Himself. But we have wronged God; we have offended and hurt Him; we’ve damaged the relationship for which we were made. The damage needs to be repaired. The bill needs to be paid. The wrong needs to be righted.

 

Listen again, then, to these startling words that Paul wrote in the letter to Colossians. Three times in these short verses Paul talks about the mission of Jesus in terms of “reconciling” us to God or “making peace” between us and God. Those are relational terms, and they imply that there was once a friendship, and that that friendship is now broken and in need of repair. A quarrel has come between the lover and the beloved. And only one thing can repair it.

 

But listen to who is doing the reconciling, who is initiating the reconciling, and who is paying for the damage done to the relationship.

 

For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in [Jesus Christ], and through him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by [his] making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now [listen to who is doing the acting] now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

 

When we were in Mexico in January I had our team try to do their daily devotions using a Spanish translation of the psalms just to see what they noticed. And one of the interesting things that struck me is the Spanish word for “friend” and “enemy.” Friend is amigo. Enemy is enemigo—literally, “friend,“ “not friend.” The opposite quality of the two words is much more obvious in Spanish than in English.

 

Paul is saying: “Once you were enemigos. But God has made you amigos through the death of Jesus.”

 

It’s a similar point that Paul makes in his letter to the church in Ephesus when he writes in Ephesians 2:12:

 

Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace….

 

How easily we skip over those five words because we’ve heard them so many times: “through the blood of Jesus.” Consider the magnitude of what they convey: God is literally dying to be in relationship with you.

 

The incarnation wasn’t enough. The crucifixion was required.

 

That God would come to us in human form is stunning enough: that God would condescend to become a human being like one that He created. But that God would take upon Himself the cost of repairing that relationship—the relationship that we have ruptured, that we have shattered—is even more stunning still. But that he would give His life for the sake of being in relationship with us: that’s utterly beyond our grasping.

 

God longs to be in relationship with us—guilty though we are, having hurt Him as we have. And He is bent on this very thing in all of his dealings with us across each day and across each lifetime reaching out to us, pursuing us, wooing us towards his loving embrace.

 

You may be familiar with the wonderful poem by Francis Thompson called “The Hound of Heaven.” If you haven’t read it recently, I would encourage you even this afternoon to go home and pull it up online and read it. It’s a beautiful work of writing. In it God’s pursuit of us is likened to a dog who has gotten our scent and relentlessly pursues us. Thompson describes running:

 

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat.

 

But though this image captures the tenacity of God’s pursuit of us, the metaphor of God being like a hound chasing a running man misses the heart of the biblical witness here. God is not a hound in pursuit of a criminal, but a lover pursuing his beloved. God is not like an investigative reporter eager to expose us. God is the lover of our soul and it is love and love alone that motivates all of His dealings with us.

 

Thompson knows this and as the poem progresses, subtly the metaphor shifts, and you begin to see him referring to this one who is chasing after him no longer as a hound but as this “tremendous Lover” whose hand he says, “Reaches outstretched caressingly.”

 

I think this reflects more accurately the picture that the Scriptures consistently give of the intimate pursuing love of God, such as in Hosea, when God says of his disobedient and rebellious people: “I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.”

 

It’s not an accident that the church across the ages has recognized in the frank description and celebration of love that we find in Song of Solomon a picture of God’s love for his people. “Listen! My lover! Look! Here he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills…. Look! There he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice. My lover has come to me and speaks to me, ‘Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.’”

 

It’s easy for us to hear in the cross the voice of incrimination and accusation. But the cross is God’s valentine; it is a lover’s sacrifice for his beloved.

 

Can you hear in these lover’s words the whispered words of God for you this morning? God, who longs to close the distance between the two of you, lover and beloved, and to be in relationship with you?

 

What will be your response to this lover’s pursuit?

 

It is crucial that we notice one more thing, one more implication, about this passage:

 

God loves us, and He has pursued us as a lover pursues his beloved, but we have to come to a place where we give ourselves over to His love for us. God makes reconciliation possible, but reconciliation requires two. We need to abandon our other false and fickle lovers and stop and turn and let Him catch up with us and sweep us up in His love for us. We have to come to a point where we say, “Yes.”

 

In II Corinthians, Paul writes:

 

“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them…. We implore you, therefore, on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God!”

 

It isn’t enough for us to know and to believe that Jesus died on the cross to reconcile humanity to God. We need to believe that he died for us. You need to believe that he died for you to make you right with Him, to make me right with Him. We need to come to a place where we put our confidence in His love for us and in His act of love for us. We must receive the gift of forgiveness and new life.

 

In his exceptional study of Jesus’ death called The Atonement, Leon Morris writes: “God desires not a truce, but a friendship.” Sharon and I recently got some time away, and during that time we spent some time working on some things in our marriage. And at one point I asked Sharon what she saw as the goal of our conflicts. We talked about it, and we agreed that it is not enough simply to vent our hurt or to establish who is to blame or even to own up to wrongdoing. The goal of conflict is to be reconciled, for us to go from being enemigos to being amigos again—to restore our relationship to what it was like before there was any offense or hurt, to be friends all over again.

 

And that is God’s desire: that there would be nothing that would stand between us, and that we would enjoy a relationship of mutual delight always.

 

It didn’t take long for me to get tired of hopping in my car every six weeks and driving 934 miles each way. We needed to be together all the time. So the next summer we married.

 

John Adams and his wife, Abigail, were close friends their whole lives. Often circumstances required them to be apart, sometimes for months at a time. And during their nearly forty years of friendship, they wrote almost 1,200 letters to one another. And nearly every letter begins with the expression, “My Dearest Friend.”

 

There is a new collection of a sampling of some of these letters which has just recently been published. It’s called “My Dearest Friend.” I would really encourage you, if you’re interested, to pick it up. In one of those letters, written just before they were married, John writes this to Abigail Smith:

 

“Will you come and see me? I should be glad to see you in this House, but there is another very near it, [meaning his family home that would be his once he married] there is another very near it where I should rejoice much more to see you, and to live with you, till we shall have lived enough to ourselves, to Glory, Virtue and Mankind, and till both of us shall be desirous of Translation to a wiser, fairer, better world. I am, and till then, and forever after will be your Admirer and Friend, and Lover John Adams.”

 

Why did Jesus die? To make us right with the God who loves us. God wants to be in eternal relationship—in eternal love relationship—with those that He has made.

 

And this is the lover’s desire concerning his beloved: to close the chasm between heaven and earth, to close the distance between lover and beloved, “that we may live together with Him” in intimate relationship not only in this life but for all of the lives to come, for all of the ages to come.

 

The lover of your soul whispers His invitation to you. Have you ever said, “Yes?”

 

Would you pray with me? I’m going to read the prayer that’s printed on the inside cover of your bulletin. If you want, you can turn there and follow along with me. I’m going to read this out loud, and if this expresses the desire of your heart, if these are the words that surface in you, the beloved, that you would like to bring back to God, perhaps for the very first time, I would invite you to do so in silence as I pray.

 

God, I need You. I’m sorry for all my sins, for the many ways I’ve lived my life for me rather than for You. I now put my trust in your Son, Jesus Christ. I believe that through His death and resurrection He rescues me, making me right with You, and I accept His gift of forgiveness and new life. I turn from a life lived for me, and choose a life lived for You and with You. Lead me into the life You intend for me, Lord, and I will follow. In Jesus’ name I pray this, Amen.