Do We Comprehend Agape?

Title of my sermon is, Do You Comprehend Agape? You comprehend agape. And as it says, this is part one. I think that will come together as you hear the sermon as we go into the next few weeks. Agape, the highest form of love, is what most people will define it as. It's a godly love. I've been given sermons for over twice a starting in January, it would be 27 years I've been giving sermons. And I have touched on agape so many times, and there's a good reason for it. As you look in even a simple concordance, and you'll see that 90% of the word love in the New Testament Greek is agape or agape. It's very prominent there. And so when you talk about this, it's even put in songs. It's used so frequently. Do we, as members of God's church, as members of the body of Christ, do we understand agape? I know what the world thinks that they can see it. Okay. Maybe a picture of a young couple holding hands. True love, we'll say. When you start out, I am counseling someone for marriage tomorrow, and the next coming weeks that they will be getting married. Their first marriage for each of them, young, and they have an understanding. But it's very small compared to someone that's been married for 30, 40, 50 years. And we want to see the movies, don't we? With the happy ending, the fairy tale, where this shows them walking through here together hand in hand, and there's love. And then at the end of the movie, it shows this old cudger my age or somebody walking there with his wife of 40, 50 years. Everybody feels, oh, I feel the love. Is that agape? Hmm. But what about the young child? We've all seen it. The child that sells to its mother, its father, or even grandparents, I love you this much. And we all have to smile because to them that is the maximum amount of love. They can't show it any other way. It's like, yes. And we so love that innocence that is there. The genuineness of a child bringing you something that means absolutely nothing. Some worthless trinket, but to them it's important and you show just how important it is to you. And I just feel like they've really given you something. It's very, very touching. Is that agape? I'd like to look at a scripture, if you will, if you'll turn with me. Psalm 103. I'll read from the New King James Version. Psalm 103. Let's go to verse 11. Psalm 103 verse 11. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is God's mercy toward those who fear or revere him. Okay. That's how great it is. We'll talk about that at another time. But then he says in verse 12, I'd like you to think about this, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. Is that agape?

As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him or revere him. As far as east is from the west. No, not talking about Fort Myers to Vero Beach. But God is actually wanting us to reference this kind of love that he had. And though the word agape, we're going to go into that, is not in because it's a Greek word. But there's also an incredible word he even uses here. We'll explain that at another time of the word hesed. It's transferred here mercy, but it's a type of love, and it's God's mercy. It's God's mercy, and that love is how wide? How wide is that? Do you know that the experts, I'm not one of them, but not too far from Cocoa Beach down there. You have some experts in this of how wide the universe is. And so they said that it is 92 billion light years across. 92 billion light years across. That's an estimate, give or take probably a billion or two. A light year, 186,000 miles per second. Our minds have a hard time wrapping that. Okay, how wide is this? Well, one light year at that time in human miles is 5.88 trillion miles. 5.88 trillion miles is one light year. Now multiply that 5.88 trillion miles times 92 billion. My calculator didn't go that high. That's how wide. God wants us to picture his love for us. That's pretty wide. The widest thing he could get us to imagine, they couldn't back then. Except for the last 60, 70, 100 years, the most you could see is 10,000 stars.

This is God. That's how big he is. That's how big his love is. I'd like you to go with me to a set of scriptures that we will be looking at for the next few weeks, and it's fairly simple. But I think it's very important for us. It is important for me. If you would, turn to Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 3. Ephesians chapter 3. And I'll touch on 16, then I'll go to 17 and 18. So if you will, join me in 16. Because it says that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might through his spirit and what? The inner man. That means this outside. He's not worried about that. Not worried about how your hair looks, or whether you have any left. I like that. It's all about the strength of the inner man. What's inside? That spirit that's driving us, guiding us, makes us who we are. How powerful is that? So it's very important to him through his spirit to the inner man. Verse 17. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Does he? How strong is your faith? Because he needs to dwell. That you being rooted and grounded in agape. So Christ desires, God desires for us to be grounded in agape. To be grounded and rooted in agape, we better understand what it is to the best of our abilities. Because it's so important. Go through a concordance this week and see how many from Matthew to Revelation the word agape or agapeo is used. Oh, there's a filial. There's a brotherly love mentioned and there's a couple other little things mentioned. But no, this is big. This is big and it should be big to us. And why should we be rooted and grounded in love? Because of verse 18. That we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width, the length, the depth, and the height of God's love. The width, the depth. Wow. The width of God's love. Oh yeah, let's leave the others for right now. Let's look at this first one. The width of God's love. Do you have it? That we're able to comprehend because that was the question, wasn't it? Do you comprehend agape? Do you know it when you see it? Do you know it when you have it? And do you know it when you don't have it? Like Dave says, teachable moments. This is one. And agape is one every single day to us.

Pretty big topic. So do we comprehend the width of God's love? We just saw the universe. We can't understand that, so how am I going to understand how wide God's love is? So is there any use in doing it? According to Paul, there is. He wants all the saints to know this. Every single one of us to comprehend not just, oh yeah, I get it. I see it. Because I can tell you after 27 years of giving sermons, I still am amazed at agape. I am still learning God's love. Thought I had it 15, 20 years ago. Man, I got this. No. The closer I get to God's age, the more I realize I don't know much. I know less and less when it comes to Him. And every day I get closer to His age. We do, don't we? Is that why He wants us? Eventually, we will be like Him in every way. 1 John 3, 2 says, hmm, something. The width of God's love. Can we look at it? I'd like to. I have a very simple Scripture.

But before we turn to the Scripture, I want you to think about something. God's love is so wide that the Creator wants everyone who has ever lived. Everyone who has ever lived to have a chance of salvation. A chance of eternal life with Him forever and ever.

That's some pretty wide love.

How wide?

John 3, 16. For God so what? Love thee. What? The Jews? No. The church? For God so loved the world. How do you get wider? That includes everybody. He so loves the world that He was willing to give up His Son and watch Him be tortured to death, mocked, spit at. Without destroying this little bitty planet, He said He could put His feet on. How wide is that love? That's pretty wide. He loved the world so much He gave His only begotten Son that no one would perish. That's pretty wide.

I'd like you to turn with me as we look at how wide. How wide? I'd like you to turn with me to 2 Peter. 2 Peter 3, verse 9. 2 Peter 3, verse 9 from the New King James. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise as some count slackness, but is long suffering towards us. Thank God for that. Yes, thank God that He's long suffering. Not willing that any should perish, but that... what's that incredible three-letter word? All, all, all should come to repentance. Every single person, He desires to repent and come to salvation. He didn't want to see anybody. Didn't want to see one single solitary soul. That amazing mind of His has watched us before we were born. Our parents, even the smallest of child, is walking across this earth today. He knows it. He feels it. He loves it. With a love we can only dream of. And that's what He wants us to do. We just came back from a feast where we are to envision, get this vision of what the coming kingdom is going to be like, to live in a fantasy world for seven or eight days.

So that we could just have a very small glimpse into that. But you see, today I'd like to take you from that world to this world, the world of Agape. Because no matter how small we make this, it can't compare to God's love. And He wants us to join Him on this journey that will lead to His kingdom and through His kingdom into eternity, where His love will abound. We thought about it. We talk about fruits of God's Spirit, love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, generalism, long suffering, self-control. What could He have started out with, anything other than Agape? As I gave a message one time at a feast that I felt that the second most abundant fruit in the present in the kingdom of God will be joy, because it's listed second. And God loves joy, but the first is Agape. That's fruit of the Spirit. It has to be first, because God is love. Agape is what the Scriptures say. We'll get into that in another message. But I want to look at that, because do we see it? I don't know that we do. Do we see it when we need to see it? I go back and flash back in my life. Many of you can do that and go back to times in your life where you've truly felt loved by someone. It is your parents. What happened? Sometimes it's good just to have the grasp, because God put love in us. It's part of His character. It's who He is, and it's in humans, even cruel, vicious humans. It's just been squashed, extinguished, or extinguished. I lived in the city of Francisville, Indiana. It wasn't a city. It was a town about 80 miles outside of Chicago. And it's where I went to the first grade. I had a first grade teacher named Mrs. Lyons. Mrs. Lyons was older. Now I look. She was my age. Duh. But when you're in the first grade, you're like, she's old.

And this class of 24 Hoosiers that were all in that first grade together, we always thought she was goofy. She was just weird, you know, because she was plump. She dyed her hair really red. I mean, Lucille Ball red, and we didn't even have a color TV back then. But then she would, I don't know how they do it, but then they would, my mother used to call it rat up her hair. And next thing you know, it was kind of tall, you know? And it'd stay there with hairspray, because you could smell the hairspray. Okay. I mean, that was 19, well, 60 something, 66 when I was in class or whatever. Yeah, 66. And then Mrs. Lyons would put this pink lipstick on her lips, but she missed the lines. And it would be kind of just wide, you know? And it was, it was fun, you know? We didn't realize it at the time, but she was very nice. But she loved music, and she taught music. At first graders, you always learn all these various songs, and she would then take us down because she did play the piano. Didn't know how well at the time, but she would take the class down to the basement where there was a piano and just block walls. It was very basic. And she would then get on that piano, and she would almost jump up and down. Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, duh-mah-fuh. You know, these songs they would teach you, and her hair would be moving like this, and she would be moving, and it was just like, we kind of like were singing but laughing, and it's just, you know? And, but she was our teacher, and I didn't think anything about it till the next year when I went and got a normal teacher. Mrs. Handy in the second grade, and she was more straight line, you know? I mean, she was just like you would envision a teacher being. And so, one day, because I lived only five minute walk to school, so that we didn't have to catch the bus, so did the other city kids who, town kids who lived, so some of us would stay over afterwards, because everybody else was getting home. We didn't want to get home till, you know, the other bus, so we would stick around. And so, here, some of the seventh, eighth, and ninth graders got down there one time, and they got to talking about Mrs. Lyons, and her room was kind of up above that one. And so, here, one of the girls took her hair and put it up like this, and put some lipstick on, and was sitting there at the piano, just, and we were just, there were 15 or 20, just dying laughing. You know, this is, and she'd do it again, and we were laughing. And then, at the top of the steps, we noticed Mrs. Lyons.

And everything went quiet.

There is a time mentioned in a book somewhere that I've read, called, there's a book called God Winks, and there's also a book called God Blinks. Small, short amount of time, you know, because we look in a blink of an eye. Well, sometimes God appears in such a small little blink of an eye. Time. That we don't get it for later, two years later. So, Mrs. Lyons comes down. She'd heard everything. And she said, oh, nice to have you young people here, that you enjoy the music. I'll be back in a second. Thought, oh, no, she's going to get the principal. She came back down, and I had forgotten. Every day, for the entire year in my first grade class, she never yelled. She never screamed at anybody. She didn't have to. She baked fresh cookies every day. And at the end of the day, if the class was good, the cookie plate was handed out to everybody. Good way to train a bunch of little beasts, because it didn't cause much problems. But if they didn't, you didn't get any cookies. Nobody got any, so it was kind of a group thing. But she didn't worry about allergies or peanuts, but she made these cookies, and they were just soft, gooey. Mrs. Lyons walked back down. With her cookies, and made sure every one of us got a cookie. There was no hard feelings. There was nothingness. There was just love.

A blink. A God blink. Because how many of us could have that feeling after being mocked? Made fun of. My kids that didn't even have enough sense, some to tie their own shoes.

She then walked over to the piano, similar to the one back there. We were eating our cookies. It's enough for everybody to have more than one. And she sat there, and she played some of the most beautiful music on that Mozart Chopin. She's very accomplished. None of us knew that. We just knew she was funny looking. But we heard that music, and it just made every one of us choke because of what we had done. I got a glimpse of a gape. Yeah, they've been small, but I got it. In the second grade.

The kind of love. Let's look at that. The kind of love. First Timothy 2.

First Timothy 2 and verse 4. This is a kind of love. This is how wide God's love is. It says, He desires all men to be saved. Amen. And to come to the knowledge of the truth, not just to be saved, but to know what we know. The knowledge of the truth. The truth of the meaning of life, our destiny, everything that God has planned. And it's wrapped around a word called a gape. Truly, that's pretty wide.

Really, really wide. Go with me to Ezekiel. Ezekiel 33. This unique verse is in there. You've heard it before. Ezekiel 33 and verse 11. God's having Ezekiel try to tell them. Said, Say to them, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live, turn from your evil ways. Why should you die, O house of Israel? He was trying to warn them now. He's warning everybody. That will be the warning of the two witnesses. They're not here to just, you're all going to die.

Their message will be about repentance, repent, and no one has to die. Why? Because the love of God. Because the love of God. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden. God loves those men. He loved them. He didn't love what they did. And then we brought back. And they may be some of the greatest examples we could ever see in our life.

Because their love, their hate was so great that it choked out any love. That's why he always warns us. We need love, not hate. Because hate does choke out love. Does the other happen? Don't we all think so? That love, agape love, will choke out hate. Because it's godly love. It's the highest form of love. It is a form of love. Whether it's Hitler, Pol Pot, all the wicked people who've ever lived.

What about it? Do we understand it? Christ wanted us to. Go with me to Matthew 5. An incredible sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5 verse 43. Christ said, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Is that in Scripture? No. No.

He said, you have heard why people were teaching hate. The religious leaders of the day taught hate because you didn't think like I did. Because you didn't quite keep the Sabbath as I did. Because you didn't do these various things. That's why Christ said, in vain do they worship me. Teaching His doctrine, the commandments of men. God never wanted this taught.

And He says in verse 44, but I say, okay, forget. Can you imagine hearing Him preach that day? And He said, oh, you've heard it said, but I say, God says, this is it, listen up. But I say, to you, agape your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. And do what? Oh man, this is hard sometimes. Pray for those who spitefully use you, persecute you, make fun of you like Mrs. Lyons. Like people that don't understand you, maybe relatives. They hate you.

Love your enemies. And then the big question is why? Why? Verse 45, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He makes the Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Verse 46, for if you love those who love you, what reward have you? It's easy to love people who love us. What about those who don't? But He's saying, no, this is what you do. And it's not just love. It's agape. It's the greatest love of all. Do not even the tax collectors who were the scum of the earth at the time. I mean, there was nobody any lower. I wonder if even the lepers were considered higher than the tax collectors. Sometimes leperts couldn't help being lepers. But tax collectors could. That's why we'll get into Matthew, the tax collector, first, since he was defined by what he did. He's going to make an incredible book to go through.

And in verse 47, if you greet your brethren, hey! How you doing? Hey! Frank, good to see you, buddy. Clive Jr. Good to see you. What? They're going to say, hey, you smiled. Even Clive Jr. smiled. Okay. But if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? Do you see where he's moved this? He's moved it from love your enemies to pray for those who now he's moved it to what? Saying hi. Hey. How's your week going? To the person at Walmart. To the guy that says, you want those, you want me to bag these for you? Publix? No. I got them. You see, you see what the width of God's love is? Christ just moved the board. The board had never been considered before this white. He just put it here to us in these scriptures. It's not just being nice to each other.

Most of us are easy to love. What about the ones who aren't? I'm dealing with one now, and he's not. He's not easy to love. He's my test. He didn't even go to church.

Wow. But then he goes down to verse 48. Therefore, you shall be perfect. Or as I wrote about in my dress last night, the perfect tense, a future tense there, in the original Greek says, become you perfect. Because we're not perfect yet. We will be. There's a time we'll be perfect. But this, he's saying, become you perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. We've seen movies, TV shows. We've seen them all. Of the perception of the depiction of Jesus Christ walking on earth. Some are good. Some are atrocious. Some you don't even recognize that that's who he is. But I wonder what if we were observer, what we would really see. Because we know he didn't lie here, and he lived these verses. And it's time for us to live these verses. So that you may be able to comprehend the width of God's love. Pretty big. Pretty wide. Are you ready to try it this week? Well, I already do. Just wide.

True story. There's a packing house in the Midwest. Not really a packing house. They actually are a storage company for high-end meats. High-end meats. They actually age whole loins of steak for 60 days and 90 days, and they age cheese. But this is all high-end stuff. The temperature has to stay.

If you've ever aged steaks, it has to stay between 36 and 38 degrees for it to age properly in the bone to pull the fat from the outside through as a tenderizing process. So you can't have people going in and out of this. Cigars are a part of this. But it's a high-end company that you can order stuff for someone. Companies do, and they send this great packages out. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not a million dollars or two, just hanging meats and various things in this place.

These people send it out. This one woman, she was part of her job to take inventory every day. She'd been there for quite a while, about 10 years. Her job was more of a secretary, but she was to go in because they only shipped out early in the morning. They shipped out from this warehouse so that everything was cool when it was shipped out the warehouse. It was completely locked. You couldn't get in from the outside. You just said they wanted everything sealed so tight.

And it's her job after, when she came in at eight, nine o'clock, to see what was shipped out at five thirty, six thirty, seven o'clock that morning. It was her job to look at all the orders, see if everything was sent out. And then it was her job in the afternoon to walk in and do the final inventory count to make sure that everything was shipped. Everything was there for the next day. She'd done this many, many times before. This was the day that she actually needed to leave early.

She told her boss, she said, well, I got a doctor's appointment. I need to leave by one. She said, it's okay for me to, you know, go in about twelve to the and do our inventory. And she said, then I'll put it all on my stuff and send it to you. So you'll have it tomorrow morning. He said, sure, no problem. So she did. Except she made a mistake this time. She closed the vacuum lock door behind her, and she was stuck in that 36 to 38 degrees without her phone in a hurry, worried about, she said, worried about her doctor's appointment, family and everything else.

And there was nobody going to get her out until the next morning. And about four or five o'clock, she tried to pull whatever she could on top of her being. She just had a skirt and a thin blouse, and her fingers started turning. And she was praying to God, it's not the way I want to die. And she tried to curl up in a little ball in the corner by it.

Desk and even pulled some of the meat on top of her just to maybe. And she then looked at her watch, and it was 20 after five. Everybody goes home at five. And all of a sudden, she hears something on the door. And the security guard was prying the door open against all regulations, against everything. And he opened the door, prided open, and got her out. She said, how did you know I was in here? How did you know? And he said, for 10 years since you've been here, every morning you walk in this place and you say, morning Bob, how was your night?

And every afternoon, you never leave this place unless you go, I hope you had a good day, Bob, I'll see you tomorrow. And he said, when you didn't do that, I knew you were here. Because he said, no one in this entire operation tells a security guy, how you doing? Accept you. Hey, God blink? Think so. How about us? Do we do that? Would people know us? The width of God's love. Next week, we will go into the depth of God's love, the length of God's love. I'll do depth, and I'll do height. But my question to you is, I think a very important one for each one of us this week.

We examine this. How wide is your love? How wide is your love? Louis Biscalia, a writer, I've read a couple of his books many years ago, Louis Biscalia said, too often we understand the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life completely around.

And all we would be doing is showing humanity God's love. So do you comprehend the width of God's love? And how wide is your love?