The Love of God | Ps. Keith Pittman

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I want us to remain standing in the presence of the Lord.

If you have your Bibles, I want you to go ahead and grab it and turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter number one.

I want to read a section of scriptures to us.

Only the back portion is going to come up on the screen, but if you have your Bibles, you can turn with me to Matthew chapter 1, verses 18.

Matthew 1:18

We want to read down to verses 23.

But the word of the Lord says this.

It says, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

And her husband, Joseph, being a just man, unwilling to put her to shame, resolved a divorce with her quietly.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear.

Take Mary as your wife.

For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save the people from all of their sins.

And all of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel.

His name meaning God with us.

When Joseph awoke from his sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him.

Today I just want to talk to us for a few moments around this idea of God loving us so deeply that he chose to step down off of the throne room of heaven and to wear the uniform of humanity to step into our reality so that we can spend eternity with him.

So I want to talk to us about the love of God.

Let's pray.

Let's see what it is the Lord wants to speak to us today.

Lord, we thank you so much for your presence.

We thank you for the gift of the love of God that is demonstrated through the person of Christ Jesus.

So God, I just pray that you speak to us, that you remove every distraction that could potentially be working its way into our minds, God.

Lord, I just ask that you give us open eyes to see you and only you.

I pray that you give us open ears to hear your truth above all else.

And God, I just pray that you give us open hearts to receive everything that you have for us.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen.

Amen and amen.

Church, we put our hands together for the goodness of God.

Can we put our hands together for the goodness of God?

Come on.

God, God loves you.

And before you take your seats, I want you to turn to four people and tell them, look them dead into their eyes and tell them God loves you.

Look them in the eye, look them in the eye, tell them God loves you.

God loves you.

God loves you.

Thank you.

That's right.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Nobody told me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I need encouragement.

I need a little bit of encouragement too.

God indeed does love us.

But when I think about love, it's it's it's interesting how we understand love.

Because dictionaries would define love as this.

It says that love is a is a deep, tender affection that we have towards someone or something, and is typically attached to some form of attachment.

My deep affection is attached to something, and that by definition is love.

And if I think about it, that's very helpful, but it's still kind of vague.

Because when you think about the English language and a way in which we use love, it has such broad applications.

After all, I can I can say here right now that I love my wife.

Shout out to Chanster Rapper.

I love my wife.

I love my wife.

I I love my children.

I love my grandchildren.

I I I love our church.

I I love that fresh start is in the building with us today.

I love you guys.

I I I love all of this, but you know what else I love?

I love a good latte.

Because this latte that I made this morning is fire.

Like I love a good latte.

Like Megan and I we went to this burger spot last week and then it was amazing.

I love that burger spot.

Man, you give me a nice smash burger with the right sauteed onions, but I'm telling you, man, it'll change your life.

I I love it so, I love it so deeply.

Megan and I just got finished watching the show and we we loved it.

We were talking about it for hours and debating with our families around it.

Man, I love a good French Friday, I love a good milkshake.

Man, I got this new vacuum cleaner, it changed our life.

I love our vacuum cleaner.

I love that the Philadelphia Eagles won last night.

I love that Jake Paul last lost on Friday night.

I I love all of those things.

They they make me so happy, but unfortunately, when we have so many different things that fall into one category, what does it really mean to love then?

Because if the way that I describe my love for my wife is also attached to my love for a good latte, maybe we're missing something here.

Just a little bit.

No wonder we're so confused when we hear the idea that God loves us because maybe in our minds we've thought that God's love for us is circumstantial the same way that our love for the things in our lives are.

But the Bible begins to bring us into something that allows us to have a better understanding of what the love of God means.

There's several words that the Bible uses that we often will interpret as love, but they have deeper meaning.

There's there's the Greek word eros, which is which is an intimate romantic love.

They want to make sure that that's clear that that's what that type of love is.

There's storge love, which is a type of love that you have when you're with your family.

That's a deep love, but it may not be the same type of love that you have for your spouse.

There's there's phylos, which is the brotherly love, where we get philadelphia, brotherly love, the tush put.

Okay, we understand where these things come from, but then the Bible gives us another word that is uniquely connected to God's love for us, and it's the word agape.

Come on, somebody did their Bible study.

Somebody say agape.

Agape is a self-giving love, it's a it's a sacrificial love, it's a covenant-shaping love, it's a it's a love that that has no end to it.

So in the Bible, when it says that God loves you, it is saying that he agape you.

It's a sacrificial love, it's a love that has no ending, it doesn't have any circumstances attached to it, it doesn't have an expiration attached to it, that God's love for you is self-giving and self-sacrificing.

That's a deeper type of love.

That's not a circumstantial love, that's not a love that changes with the seasons, but it's a love that that continues to pursue us and it's it's self-giving.

And so, God, when he wanted to communicate his love to us, he showed up.

In Christian theology, what we call that is a word that we say is incarnation.

When God's love put on flesh and blood.

God didn't love us from a distance, but he chose to love us by showing up in our everyday life, by putting on flesh and blood and moving into the neighborhood, as John would put it.

So in the Gospel of John, when he opens up, he doesn't talk about baby Jesus in a manger.

He doesn't talk about angels making an announcement, but what he does is he says something that doesn't sound like a Hallmark card, but it actually sounds like an earthquake for our soul because he says that agape, that that word, that that God incarnate, that he showed up, he put on humanity and he dwelled amongst us.

He wanted to be with us.

Listen to me, friends.

When scripture wants to define love, it points to a person.

And that person that it points to is Jesus.

1 John 4 10 says this it says that God loves us so much that he sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins.

Love, biblically speaking, is God's presence.

So, this is what I want you to write down and put it in your soul that the gift of God's love is his presence.

That's the gift of God's love.

That's how he demonstrates his love for us.

When we look at the the the famous John 3.16, it says that God so loved the world so deeply that he gave his only begotten son.

So loved, he he loves you so deeply that he gave you something.

It wasn't a concept, it wasn't a word, it wasn't a phrase, it wasn't an idea, that he loves us so deeply that he gave us something.

God attaches his love to a person, he attaches his love to a movement of giving.

That word cosmos, that means the earth is the Lord's in the fullness thereof.

That means that when God created you from the dust of the ground, he wasn't, he wasn't, he wasn't creating you from something that we that we shake our feet off, but he was creating you from a very substance that he loves.

He created you from something that was meaningful to him.

So not only is God's love universal, but it's also personal.

God loves you so so much that he gave you the gift of his presence.

And sometimes we can lose sight of it because we think that God's love is is beyond us, it's for everyone, but but it's it's it's so personal.

Sean, God loves you so much.

Megan, God loves you so much.

Marcus, God loves you so much.

We have to make it personal if it's ever going to be transformational.

He loves you so much that he gave you Jesus.

He gave us his presence.

One of the things that I think we often lose sight of is the pursuit of God's love.

When we begin to really wrap our minds around it, we begin to recognize that God's love is constantly moving towards us.

In the book of Genesis, where the Bible gives an outline of all of creation, it beautifully encapsulates this moment where God is talking with Adam and Eve, and he says to them, Listen, you can choose to live in unbroken fellowship with me for all of eternity.

You represent all of mankind, and if you stay in fellowship with me, we will eat and live in his garden, and your the family that will come from it will be a place of bliss, of wholeness, and unbroken fellowship.

Or, or you can choose to figure things out on your own.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And and because man and its its inclination and because of the temptation of the enemy always whispering in our ear, trying to convince us that God is holding out on us, that maybe God's ways aren't what's best for us, we as human beings have a tendency to listen to that whisper and say, Well, maybe there's something that God isn't telling me, and so we made a choice.

And naturally, if we really think about the the magnitude of God, he did not have to respond in the way in which he did.

He could have just cut them off, started all over again.

He he could have gone a completely different direction, but God's love moves towards humanity with a beautiful phrase where he simply says, Adam, where are you?

Where are you?

God was pursuing Adam, aka God was pursuing mankind.

I can sense that our our fellowship has been broken, and now I'm gonna step into your reality and I'm gonna pursue you.

It's moving towards us.

God's saying, Where are you right now?

And from that moment forward, throughout the course of scripture, we see love moving towards God's people.

God was moving towards Enoch when he walked with him, he was moving towards Abram when he spoke with him under the stars at night.

He was moving towards Moses when he met him in the in the wilderness at a burning bush.

He was moving towards them when they were leading the children of Israel out of Egypt.

He was moving towards them when he spoke to Isaiah and said these words that a woman is going to conceive a child, and that child is going to be called Emmanuel, God with us.

This is we we see the full counsel of scripture showing us that God is continuously moving towards us.

So when we celebrate this season, we don't celebrate the gifts that are under the tree, we celebrate the gift that has been given to redeem our very souls.

God's love moving towards us, because the gift of God's gift of God's love is his presence.

But not only does he move towards us, but God's love stays with us.

It stays with us.

And if I can be honest, and I probably would not have put this into words in the earlier formation of my faith, but but I truly believe that there were moments in my life where I felt that my relationship with God was truly dependent upon my holiness or my righteousness.

I was presented to a God of perfection and be holy because I am holy and and and sin no more, and those things are very true.

But what can often happen is we can begin to think that God's love for me is based on a report card instead of the finished work of Christ on the cross.

Because we live in a world that has merits and we need it.

If you do a good job, you get a raise, hopefully.

If you if you if you show up at work, there's there's merits, there's there's recognition for it.

If you if you study and you and you pass the test, it's reflected in your grade.

I do my part and then I get the results from it.

But when it begins to sneak into my theology, then I can begin to have a doctrine that says that that if I just pray a little bit more, maybe, maybe God will will remove his wrath from me.

Maybe if I if I fast a little bit more, I can I can be hungry enough to get God's attention and and finally he'll remove this thorn from my flesh.

Maybe if I smile a little bit bigger, I can I can disguise the depression that I'm walking through, and God will strengthen me because the joy of the Lord is his strength.

Over and over again, we can turn our walk with God into this behavioral modification that makes me believe that the goodness of God, the love of God is contingent upon my performance instead of Christ.

But the Bible shows me that Jesus says to his disciples, I will not leave you nor forsake you.

That means that even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

That means that even while we're trying to figure out life, Christ is with us.

That even when I make my biggest mistakes, God is with me.

He was with me in my argument with my wife when I said something I shouldn't have said.

He was with me to comfort me, but he was with me to correct me.

God stays with us even in our messy seasons.

And if we truly believe that my humanity can perform me out of heaven, then that means that my performance must have put me into heaven.

But when I understand that God's love moves towards me and is with me, it helps me to understand that the goodness of God continues to transform me.

But I want you to hear me because I understand that many of us, we can come to the conclusion that if we can perform just the right way, that if I can do the right things, that maybe, just maybe the struggle that's existing in my life right now, it wouldn't be there.

Because I sit and I talk with people.

I can't tell you how many folks I've talked with at the end of a service were with tears in our eyes trying to convince me, Keith, I know what the Bible says, but you don't know my sin, you don't know my struggle.

And it's almost like they're trying to convince themselves of why when Jesus said it is finished, it didn't include their struggle.

Yeah, I know what that says, Keith, but you don't understand what happened to me.

You don't, you don't know.

I I got I I got arrested.

I I I my family fell apart because of that infidelity.

You don't understand, and they're trying to talk their way out of the goodness and grace of God, and it is there when I say, let us turn to Romans 8, 38, where it says, I believe that there is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from the love of God.

I will I need to say that again because somebody needs to get that in their spirit.

There is nothing in all of creation that you can ever do that's gonna separate you from the love of God.

That that means that even in that infidelity, there will be correction, but God still loves you.

That means even in that addiction, there may be some consequences, but God still loves you.

That means even in that same-sex attraction, that God may redirect you, but he still loves you.

There is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from the love of God.

So if anything that the enemy whispers in your ear and tells you that God has had enough, we turn and say the devil is a liar because his word confirms that he is constantly pursuing me and he lets me know there is nothing I can do that can separate me from God's love.

But the truth of the matter is when we really, really, really allow the love of God to pursue us, when we really, really, really allow the love of God to sit with us even in our messy seasons, it will bring us to a place where the love of God will transform us.

I want to make sure for any of the YouTube theologians, if you're gonna go with point number two where God's love sits with us in our mess, make sure you reference point number three where it says, but God's love will transform us.

It's it's both and.

Because when you truly have an encounter with the love of God, it will transform you.

It is impossible to have an encounter with the altering love of God and remain the same.

There was a moment in my life that I call it BM and after beam.

You know what that is?

Before Megan and then after Megan.

My life was before Megan and I thought I was doing good, but after Megan, it transformed my life because I had an encounter with the love that's gonna stick with me no matter what season I go into.

If that is how it is with human love, how much more should it be when we're talking about the love of a divine being who sees the end from the very beginning?

Every time we look in scripture and see that Jesus is moved with compassion, that is love transforming people.

And when love shows up, it feeds you.

When when love shows up, it heals you.

When love shows up, it touches the things that other people reject.

But when love shows up, it also redirects us.

The Bible says that there was a woman who was caught in the very act of adultery, and it was presented to Jesus for him to render a verdict on it.

The law demanded that she would die.

But Jesus' love, him being moved with compassion, he says, I forgive you, but go and sin no more.

I forgive you, but go and sin no more.

Transformation.

The love of God met her in the middle of her mess, but the love of God transformed her and redirected her.

The gift of God's love is his presence, and his presence moves towards us.

It's with us in our mess, but it absolutely brings transformation to our very souls.

That is what the love of God does.

And when we begin to allow the love of God to truly capture every essence of our being, we will never be the same.

I want to invite the worship team to come and join me at this time as we prepare to go back into a moment of worship and reflection.

I've been thinking quite a bit about how the varying ways in which we can demonstrate God's love.

And I remember back when I was younger and my my my BM days before Megan days, but also my BC days before Christ's days, when I would be out with my friends and and hanging out, and and and God only knew when I would be coming back home.

And my mom did something very subtle.

She would always leave the light on, so no matter what time I got home, I could see with clarity.

I never really connected the dots of what she was doing, but I remember there was a time when I was coming back from New York with my friends and I fell asleep in the back seat, and we were coming closer to my home, and my friend John was driving, and it's dark.

So I could hear him talking to my friend James, and he said, Hey, which which house, which house does Chopsticks live in?

That was my street name, Chopsticks.

That was my that was my hip hop name when I used to rap.

They said, Yo, which which house is Sticks' house?

He's like, Oh yo, it's the one that it always got the light on.

His his mom always leaves the light on for me.

They were trying to mock me a little bit.

They're like, mom wants to make sure they knows how to make his way into the house.

I heard that in my sleep, and I'm still holding on to it.

God needs to help me with that.

But but I remember those words, even in the state of mind that I was in, of you can always know which house it is, because the light is always on.

Because the love of his parent wants to make sure that he knows his way home.

To this day, whenever my children who are adults are gone, I make sure the front light is on, and it's symbolic, but it's so deep to make sure.

Sure, that when you get home, one, I want you to know that you're always welcome, but I also want you to see the path that's in front of you.

That's what Jesus being the light of the world means.

And what I know is that there are some of us who are who are stumbling in the shadows.

There are some of us who who can't see.

And maybe the world and maybe religion has told you that Jesus has turned the light out and that you're gonna have to figure it out on your own because you committed one sin too many.

But but but I'm here to to restructure our thought process just a little bit to let you know that Jesus is the light of the world, and that light never extinguishes.

You are always welcome to come back home.

So with every head bowed and every eye closed, I just want to lead us to a quick moment of prayer and then the team is gonna lead us into some worship.

But just really quick, if you know it's your time to come back home, I want you just right where you are.

Just just right where you are, just really quick, just to lift a hand up.

I'm gonna respond to the love of God on the count of three.

One, two, three.

It's time to come back home.

It's time to come back home.

Go ahead and put them up.

Be bold.

This is between you and the Lord, but we're gonna celebrate with you.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Hands up everywhere.

Celebration church.

Can we put our hands together for these brothers and sisters who are responding to the light of Christ and coming back home?

Amen.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

Follow us on social media using the handle at Celebration O R L or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.