The Love of God (Part 4) – Why Did God So Love the World?

God left Adam that way for a while, and I tell you, I’m glad He did. Really glad He did. Adam walked around on this planet for a good long time with this aloneness. I tried to describe to you the other night how alone he was by talking about that man who went around the other side of the moon alone in that capsule. He was six thousand miles, through the center of the moon, six thousand miles away from the next living human being. Adam wasn’t that close to a living human being anywhere. He was so utterly alone. A whole planet was his, and he had no one to share it with. He had no one to speak to. He had no one to utter his thoughts to. But most of all, the driving capacity to love within him had no place to go.

Then God did what to Adam must have been a cruel thing. He asked him to bring all the animals past and name them. Adam looked at the living creatures – all the living creatures in the universe are on the earth, other than those that are in the heavens, and they’re only the angels and God, so they were all there. Adam must have been frustrated watching them come by.

There was a lion. And beside him… was there a lion? No. But there was something like a lion, and Adam probably looked at it as it walked by and tried to figure out, ” What is that? It’s not a lion. That lion is like me, but what’s that beside it?” Here came a deer. There was the stag, and there was the doe. Here came the sheep, the ram and the ewe. Each one came by. There were always two, and he kept looking. They kept coming by, and the animals got progressively higher and higher, and I’m sure he just kept looking, hoping maybe something like him, but not quite him, would come by. Then they were all gone, and it was a sad hour. It was sad for man because he was alone, and he understood he had some sense of God’s aloneness.

Well, God foresaw something in what He did with Adam. He put him to sleep. He brought out of Adam part of Adam, and out of Adam He made “Adami.” Not another Adam. Praise the Lord, not another Adam. If God had presented to Adam another man, Adam would have gone into a rage and said, “Take him back where you got him and give me back my rib.” God wasn’t interested in another man. It was something slightly different, but the same. God had to put this man to sleep, draw out a rib from him, and make a counterpart to Adam.

I made a mistake the other night. I have to apologize. I was wrong. God took that rib out of Adam, brought it over here, and began fashioning that rib. You know what He did with it? He made it out of Adam, not out of the earth; He brought it up, and stood it there. And brothers and sisters, I’m guessing -this is not in the Bible – but I’m guessing that He let her stand there alone for a moment, and let Eve look around…for her counterpart. I suspect that God let her feel that same aloneness, and I suspect He let her feel that sense of love within her deepest being, and no place to go.

I believe that when God woke Adam up, and the two saw one another, it was the woman who broke out running first. You know why? Because, in having taken her out of Adam, out of Adam came a soul, a body, a spirit, and that longing, yearning to be loved…and to love, and it beat within Eve as strongly as it beat within Adam.

When she saw Adam, remember, they were in the purest state; when she saw Adam, she loved him as much as he loved her, for she had his life within her as intensely as the love in him. You understand. Later I’m going to prove that Eve embraced Adam, and I’m going to prove it. I’ll prove it from the Bible. I don’t know when I’ll get to it, but I will.

God begins a type. God had a plan for this race. God was going to satisfy His own need through this creature He had made called man. I’ve said to you many times, God never intended for there to be a creature called man as we know him today. I think you all understand that, don’t you? Everybody who does not understand that, raise your hand.

God made man with one part left out, and He intended to insert that part before the fall. There would be no fall if that part had been inserted; instead, man fell with a part left out, and a creature came upon this earth whom God had never planned – fallen man without God’s Spirit. Now then, even though we are redeemed today, we are still not quite what God originally planned because of fallenness. This thing right here is corrupted. So man fell. This didn’t disturb the Lord too much. The Lord knew He would have a counterpart someday. Do you think God can be stopped from having a counterpart? Do you? He can’t be stopped. No way.

Brothers and sisters, here are things I would say about the type. God took a corporate people and said to them, “Here will be a picture of My bride.” It’s amazing that from Genesis 2 you have to go all the way to Deuteronomy to find God’s heart. You find it in Deuteronomy 6, and what does it say? Tell me.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

“Love the Lord with all your being.” You know you didn’t know what that meant two months ago. Just some feeling of ‘Love the Lord.” No, that’s not what it says, brothers. When you get the passion of it, to love Him with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, love Him that much. Tell me, have you ever actively loved the Lord that intensely?