The Love of God (Part 3): Discover His Relentless Love for You

Here’s the story. I think I can tell it in just a moment. We are not in the New Testament yet; we are in the Old Testament, and before there is that which is real, what is there? There is the picture. Praise the Lord. There is the picture. Brothers and sisters, there is a picture in the Old Testament. What is that picture? The picture is the picture…I don’t think I’ll tell you. I think you know well enough to follow me. Do you know that it’s interesting to me…perhaps you can find this as you follow the line… God begins with the creation of man and says to man, “It is not good for man to be alone.”

The last time we met, I said to you, the day came when Jesus Christ—no, let’s not say it that way—when God reached into mankind and put the essence of mankind on Him, and He dressed Himself in soul, though He was spirit. He took the essence of man from mankind and clothed it on the Almighty, omnipotent God. What did God, standing there clothed with the essence of man, refer to Himself as? The Son of Man. And God was the Son of Man.

Now then, having taken on man’s essence, that One standing there before us…what shall we call Him? God? Or shall we call Him man? I don’t know, but that One standing before us has to say, I have all the essence of man. I am bound to him irreversibly, permanently. Now He must cry out, “It is not good for Me to be alone. It is not good for Me to be alone.” The Lord Jesus Christ has to say, because I am a man, it is not good for Me to be alone. Brothers and sisters, is He still alone? Here is what we see in Genesis 1 and 2, but in Exodus, we haven’t got a clear picture. In Numbers and Leviticus, no clear picture. It isn’t until Deuteronomy that something breaks into the open.

So let us stand in the garden now and follow the type, because the type is a picture of what we are in reality. Can you follow that? The type is what we are in reality. Man fell, and God lost what? He lost His bride. It’s a tragic hour. For a time, all you see is bad. It’s as though God stepped back and let the whole thing take its final, ultimate turn. It goes down with Cain murdering his brother. It goes down with the sons of God marrying the daughters of men. The whole race is corrupted. Finally, it gets so low that God says, “I’m sorry I even thought this idea.” I will destroy the earth, and God keeps Noah. The flood comes, and out of the flood comes Noah’s family, and it all starts over again. Man’s race is still there. God’s making no progress. We’re still in Genesis. It’s a very tragic picture.

Then one day God says to one man, “I will one day make you a great corporate person.” Who is the man? Abraham. How long is it before there is a great corporate person? Over 400 years. Because he had only that man, and that man had one son. And that man had only one son. You see, he had many sons—not by the right wife, he didn’t. He had one son, and then one son. Then there comes a family of 12, what? Twelve sons. That’s no fun. All men. I think they had one sister, didn’t they? Or did they even have a sister? I think they have one sister. God takes them where, brothers? Who allows them to go there? Don’t you think that is a small thing? Brothers, when God wanted to get down to impressing you in Isla Vista, He was willing to show you, to take 400 years to make one point…when God finally got something big enough and worthy enough that corporately together, if it became what He wanted it to be, it could be a picture of His bride…He started off with a rescue. Let me see if I can make that clear.

Twelve men go into Egypt. They grow and grow and grow and become very large. They are an entire nation of people. God looks upon them. Here is something big enough to be a type. It’s big enough for the brothers and sisters in Isla Vista to see. How many people are there? Just guess a number. Around 800,000, I’m told, plus all their servants and so on, and a lot of Egyptians who came with them. They didn’t like Pharaoh either. I guess they were Republicans or something like that. A huge number of people. How many people returned to Jerusalem after the captivity of Babylon? Fifty thousand. So God has big pictures, doesn’t He?

Is there anyone in this room who has the faith to believe the reality can get bigger than the picture? That was the picture. I don’t think anybody in this room is really aware that I believe that, so I’ll tell you tonight: I am a dangerous man. Every day you look at me, you point within your spirit and say, there goes a man who believes the reality can trump the picture.

At this time, He said something to them. What did He say? He said it in Deuteronomy. Well, I’ll read it this way. He said, ” Do not think that I love you because of your size, because you are the least of all people.”  Then He gave the reason why He loved them. What was it? It was not based on their size. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the people, for you were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord loved you. The Lord did not love you and choose you because you were the greatest of all people. You were the fewest. He chose you because… Now, why did He love them? Why did God love Israel? Because He had fallen in love with them. Chris, why does He love you? Because He fell in love with you.

Brothers and sisters, do you realize that I grew up a young man and I don’t know how many girls there were in the whole world, but one day it was probably destined, given a natural course of events, for me to fall in love. Did I know ahead of time who I would fall in love with? Tell me, did I? Did I fall in love? The answer to that is yes. I didn’t fall in love with an Italian. I didn’t fall in love with a Greek. My wife told me I’d better find some way tonight to explain to you that I am French, because otherwise something I said the other night might have sounded different from how I meant it. Do you know who I fell in love with? Unexpectedly, without a plan, capriciously, without forethought, and I assure you, without good judgment. No, it’s true. One day, I simply fell in love with a British girl.

Why did I fall in love with her? Because I fell in love with her. I want you to know this presented a tremendous problem. You ask my wife if it did not present a tremendous problem. There is only one girl in the whole world I have ever said, “I love you.” Only one. Only one. I once said, when I was a little kid, that if I ever told a girl I love you, I would marry that girl. I only said it to one girl in the whole world, and I married her.

We’re quite different, I tell you. We are very different. Typically British, very French. But I fell in love with her. God fell in love with His people, and He began showing that love by taking her out of slavery. She was an unloved, ugly thing. No one in all this earth cared for her. But God, capriciously, unexpectedly, fell in love with her, and He brought her up out of Egypt. Such a rescue undid her.