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Why did Jesus die? To show us the furious love of God.
In the Ragamuffin Gospel Brennen Manning quotes and elaborates on what Chesterton taught about grace. Chesterton calls grace The Furious Love of God. Manning explains, “God is not moody or capricious; He knows no seasons of change. He has a single relentless stance toward us: He loves us. He is the only God who loves sinners. False gods – the gods of human manufacturing – despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. But of course this is almost too incredible for us to accept. Nevertheless, the central affirmation of the Reformation stands: through no merit of ours, but by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved Son. This is the Good News, the gospel of grace."
It says in James 1:17 that there is no shadow of turning with God. This means God loves us in a way that never changes. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. His love for us has no beginning and no end. It can’t be rained out or over turned by the Supreme Court. He love has only one way to exist-furious!
This concept of furious love has burned in my soul and I want to spend time with you today walking around in it. I want you to drink some of the 100 proof, 2,000 year old grace today and leave here drunk as a skunk on the love and grace of God.
I want to start painting the word picture today with a familiar story to most Bible-belt people. For those of you new to the Word don’t worry, I will try to paint with brilliant colors. I want to start with a question and then answer it. The question is when did the Father love the prodigal son? The answer is; he loved him all the time.
Briefly I will tell a story of a father whose son leaves home and squanders wealth, health, reputation, and faith. The son comes home and the Father welcomes him with love and acceptance – no questions asked – no apology demanded.
He loved him before he was born. He loved him when he cried all night, messed up his diapers and left teeth marks on the good furniture. He loved him when he threw more food on the floor than he ate. He loved him flying kites, and wrestling with puppies. He loved him when he was close to the father and obedient. He loved him when he became an adolescent and started being distant with new values and friends. He loved him when he stormed out of the house saying, “I hate you and I will never come back.” He loved him when he fell into shameful sin and wanton excess. He loved him when he was hated, sick, empty, friendless and alone. He loved him the day he swallowed the bitter pill of pride and turned for home. He loved him every struggling step of the way on the journey home. He loved him when he arrived at home pitiful and beaten. He loved him all the time just the same.
The Father’s love for the Prodigal was a furious love that was not moody or capricious; it knew no seasons of change. The Father’s love had a single relentless stance toward the prodigal: He loved him. He didn’t just love him a little – he loved him with ferocity.
The furious love of God is the next in the sermon series – Why did Jesus die? In this series of sermons we have glimpsed some of the reasons for his death. He was our blood sacrifice and scape goat. Next we saw that He died to get us out of our tree with the Zacchaeus story. Some of us are carrying around a bean in our pocket or purses to remind us when our heart is right the good seed sprouts in us and we become new persons. Jesus died to make us a new person; all of that and much more.
Today we are going to follow the same thought and once again ask why Jesus died. We want to try to catch a glimpse of the size of his love. The teaching today answers our question by saying JESUS DIED TO SHOW US THE FURIOUS LOVE OF GOD.
So let’s evaluate the quality as well as the quantity of his love. We want do bite it to see if it is the real thing. We want to see just how well it lasts and wears. We want to see if we can get 100,000 miles out of it. We want to know just how good the love of God is.
We tasted the furious love by looking at the love of a Father for his wayward son. Now let’s sample his love through the words of the Son himself. In Matthew 23:37 Jesus looked over the city of Jerusalem and his heart was broken because of his furious love was being rejected. He said, “Jerusalem! Jerusalem!. . . How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me. The heart of God is broken when his children don’t believe him and return his love.
Have you ever been in love and had your love rejected? It hurts! Jesus loves you and if you are rejecting the truth is it still stings today. He is still weeping over Jerusalem. He looks at you and dreams of the time when you will run under his wings. But just because you have rejected him does not weaken his love for you. He is still furiously in love with you.
When he cleansed the temple he was furious with love for the common man who had been kept from coming to the house of God by merchants. Mark 11:15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: “‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.
Don’t get between a sow bear and her cubs. If you find yourself in a situation like that just hope you can out run who ever is with you because momma bear is going to be furious.
Merchants had come between God and the people he loved. God loved the common people and the poor with a passion. Anything in the way had to go. Furious love would not allow it to remain. And Jesus went in battle stations and unleashed righteous fury because of love.
I want us to settle in on a text and let it instruct us in love and grace. Look at Romans 5:6-8 for a time this morning and start getting used to the idea that God loves you and me with a passion that is furious, unmoving, unchanging and eternal. It sounds a little too good to be true, but just wait.
Romans 5:6-8 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
God’s love is not deserved. It just demands that we take it like it is, because he takes us like we are
Why did grace come at the right time?
“. . .At just the right time” Why is this the right time?
Because we were spiritually dead in sin
“. . .when we were still powerless. . .” The amazing thing about grace is that it is given when we were not strong enough to take it much less earn it or hold on to it.
In John Jesus tells that he came to earth to save sinners, not to condemn them – they are condemned already.
If grace were given only when we were strong then our strength could be considered part of the deal. Our strength, intellect, understanding or anything else is not part of the deal of redemption. Grace is offered before we are aware of the gift. It comes before we realized we even need it - “Not by works so that no man can boast.’
Because we were on our way to hell
We were ungodly – sinners. We were not the type of people that someone would die for. We were sinners and just in time Jesus died for us. That is furious love.
How long does God’s furious love last?
Malachi 3:6 “I the LORD do not change.
Romans 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
One last word picture and I think you will get it. Hosea loved Gomer and nothing could change his mind. She was a dirty whore and he loved her. She broke his heart a thousand times and he came back to her. She became unlovely and used up. She was sick and diseased and he paid the price for her freedom. Nothing could keep him from loving her. His love was one sided. It came from one direction. It did not change with the changing seasons and shadows. It was one directional, furious, love.
Here’s the deal:
If God had revealed his love any other way we would never understand the size of it. What if he had said, OK, Poof! You are all saints. Or if he had said I will save the world by turning stones into bread and fill bellies and heads with knowledge. It would not have been enough. Satan tried to entice Jesus to jump off the corner of the Temple and show his God-ness by wowing people into the Kingdom. We would not be impressed very long and would demand bigger and better demonstrations. Full bellies would not be enough very long. We would want some butter and then jelly with the bread. Mankind is forever dissatisfied.
But when blood started dripping and nails started ripping the entire universe changed. This way of showing furious love is in blood. The other ways suggested were bloodless. God’s way bled all over the place and still is bleeding and covering sin and restoring lives and bringing homes together. The blood shows the fury of God’s love. Blood showed the commitment of God. Blood showed the depth of God’s love. Blood revealed the furious love of God.
When the rich man in Luke 16 died and found himself in heaven he said, “Send someone from the dead to warn my brothers. Tell them not to come to this place.”
What God said to him must be heard by this generation. God said, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.’
Moses stands for the written word and the prophets are represented by preachers like me who stand and proclaim the furious love of God. If you don’t hear this, you will not hear at all. There is nothing coming better to tell you. There is no one coming later to tell you about His love.
