Beth Moore - Taking Root In The Family Tree - Part 2
I want you to listen to these words. I'm going to read to you these measurements that are immeasurable. I'm gonna read them to you out of the NIV. Listen to the wording. It says, "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide, how long, how high, how deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God".
I want you to see something. Until I began memorizing out of this book, this had never hit me with this kind of profoundness before. I want you to understand that what this portion of scripture is telling us is that literally we need divine unction to even begin to grasp it. In other words, if you come this weekend, we can study our brains out. You can take every single note we throw out to you this weekend. You can sing your heart out. But if we're gonna go where we're talking about going this weekend, where we dig down our roots into the deepest part of our conviction that the love of Jesus for us is immeasurably wide, long, high, and deep, that we literally need the unction of God to do it.
I'll prove it to you. Look back in the scriptures in Ephesians chapter 3, where it says in verse 16, "that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith," verse 17, "that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend". Listen, somebody just go with me here for a second. When was the last time you just had to have honest to goodness extra strength to even comprehend something? When was the last time you had to hold your brain together? Isn't that the most beautiful thing?
When somebody's like, "Whoa! Okay. This thing's about to break here". Because do you realize he's saying, "that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth". "To grasp," the NIV says, "how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge". He's talking about grasping something, listen to the play on words he's doing, because he's under the inspiration.
This brilliant mind of the Apostle Paul, then under the inspiration of the Spirit, it's just like, "What on earth is going on here"? Because what he's saying is this ability to grasp what cannot even be measured so that we can know what cannot be known. Anybody? This is not even anything we can write on paper. We just get a supernatural strength and empowerment for God for it to even find its way down into our roots. "The happiest life takes the deepest ROOT in God's family tree".
Number two is this: "Deep ROOTS need divine power to grasp measureless love". I wanna know what can't even be known with a human brain. That's what I wanna know. But I wanna rest for just a couple of minutes on long. Long. When I say these kinds of things to you, I do not say them lightly. I want to try to make a deal with you. I will never try to just jerk your emotional chain. I'm not into that. I've been around so long I know the things that could get you goin'. I know how to get a group crying. I know how to get us all wound up in emotion. I'm not interested in it. I want the real thing. Love is so strategic to us and it matters so much to us that we're gonna have to get on some painful things so that we can let some things take root.
So we're gonna have to go digging. And so would you just be willing to do that? I want to ask you: have you ever been loved by somebody that just, their love just could not last? Whose love wasn't long enough? I mean, it started well, but it just, like, ran out. The long, long love of Christ. There is nothing that will make us appreciate the fact that Christ's love is long like having experienced a love that was short. Not very long ago, somebody said to me, "But I thought he loved me". And I said, "What makes you think he didn't"? I think he did too. And she said, "Because it was just over". The long, long love of Christ.
I wanna say something very tenderly to you. To somebody in this room. One reason why you have come this weekend, I believe, it's time for you to know that you really can live without so-and-so loving you. One of the best things you could do this weekend is come to the realization that you really can live without blank loving you. I wish we didn't have to, but the thing of it is we are completely paralyzed by the fact that someone doesn't love us, and we think we cannot make it. And you know what? Oh, yes, you can. Oh, yes, you can. But if you leave that as a canyon, you cannot. There is a love to fill up that canyon in you. And it's a love that will last forever.
In Ephesians 3:17, "so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love". You see, in this picture, love is soil. Isn't that interesting? So I'm at the roots and being rooted and grounded in love. And so in this picture of this family tree, love is soil. You can hear it beautifully in the translation called The Voice. It's really artistic and creative. Listen to how it translates it: "May love be the rich soil where their lives take root. May it be the bedrock where their lives are founded so that together with all of Your people they will have the power to understand the love of the Anointed is infinitely long, wide, high, and deep, surpassing everything anyone previously experienced". I want you to write this one down. We're gonna talk about it a while.
Number three is this. This will be the last one you'll take down for tonight, but let's sit on it. Let's let this one sink in so that our roots can go down deep, deep. So deep that it's further than anything we have in our arsenal of conviction. Number three: "Divine love is fertilized soil for the deeply ROOTED tree". Do you know that good soil has to have a low compaction level for good roots? So here's what that means: You cannot plant something in a block of concrete. Because soil that is good soil, for something to grow deep roots, it cannot be rock-hard. It's gotta have some oxygen in it. It's gotta have some room in it because the roots have to grow. Because if it's too hard, the roots won't grow.
And so, I started thinkin' about this because how does this parallel to the soil of Christ's love? How exactly does it parallel? And I started thinking to myself that it happens when we start trying to concretely define the love of Christ. When we honestly... see, okay, listen with me. I love working with etymologies and word origins and things and what words mean. Think about what the word "definition" means. Think about what it means to define someone. Okay? Or to define something. By the time you can define me, have you not limited me? Is it not automatically a limitation? If you can come up with a definition, I'm just showing this out to you. Food for thought. If you can come up with a definition, is it not by its very nature, by its very service, what does a definition do in Merriam-Webster?
Well, it's gonna put a few sentences with something. It has now compacted it into that one definition, and I just wanna just throw out to you that maybe that's what we do with the love of Christ. We'll even do that when we testify to somebody. I mean, we'll just, like, we have it down to a concrete block. It's exactly what it looks like. This is exactly the way it acts. And we will just convey it. "This is how the love of God is". And here's the thing: for every single description and definition you and I come up with about the love of God, and there are a lot of places we can go, and I'm gonna go to some of 'em, we have to be willing to come to the end of that description and say, "But it's not just that. But it's not just that".
I just dare you to start forming the theology that says that every single time you talk about the love of God you remember, if not say, "But it's not just that. The thing about it is it's not just that". Why? Because you cannot attain to it. Neither can I. It's too long. It's too wide. It's too deep. It's too hot. It's incomprehensible. So by the time we're turning the soil into a concrete block and we're tellin' somebody, "This is a definition of the love of God". You know what we have? Here's what he said. This is the only way I think you're gonna be able to comprehend how this thing goes down. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son". Now, you think about doin' that, even in human terms. What would you give your child for? I don't know about you, but my answer would be basically nothing.
If you look up every definition in the Word of God, including the Hebrew and the Greek, Hebrew for the Old Testament, a little bit of Aramaic, and then Greek for the New Testament. If you pull every one of those together, you would have some six or seven words, depending upon your translation, that would be translated into the English word "love". Hesed is one of them in the Old Testament. And one of the best ways to try to word it, you'd find it, in several different forms in our various translations, it would come out as steadfast love, as loyal love, as unfailing love. It is a word that means covenant love. It means kindness. It means goodness. But there are also things we have to understand by the time we're saying divine love is loyalty.
It's not just loyalty. I started thinkin' about this this week. I've turned this every which way I could manage it. You know what? I don't just want Keith to be loyal to me. I want him to be loyal to me, but I want him to just be loyal to me. I'll take it in a pinch. I'll take it when he's tempted. I'll take it, I'll take it. But that's not really what I want. I want him to be loyal to me, but I want him to love me. I want him to have some emotion in it. Anybody? I mean, I don't just want it to be steadfast. I want it to be fiery. Divine love is not just loyalty or fidelity. I want Keith to be faithful to me, but I want him to just go, "You know, I just gotta, I'm sorry. I can't do that. I gotta be faithful to the old hag".
You know, I just, I don't know, it just does not ring my bell. Maybe it works for you, but it's just not working for me. Love is not emotionless. The Word of God talks about how he delights and rejoices. It describes his grief and mourning. Speaks of him at times laughing. Divine love is not emotionless. It is not just volition. He's not just determined to love you. He is determined. He is loyal. He is steadfast. He does have fidelity. But that's not all he has. And at the same time, thank God divine love is not just emotionalism. I gotta tell you something: the only thing that scares me more than thought without feeling is feeling without thought. I don't want either one of those two things. I want some volition. I want him determined in his love for me.
I don't want a little emotion. I want him to feel it. God's EQ is never higher than his IQ. Because both are the same. They're measureless. They're measureless. That's the thing, they're measureless. The love of God is holiness on fire. It's devotion and emotion. It has staying power and it has playing power. It's covenant and it's romance. But that's not all it is. He says this, I want somebody to get it. Would you just set aside how many times you've heard this kind of stuff? Would you just, like, set it aside and let it just, like, fall on us fresh? Listen carefully, listen carefully. Jesus said to his disciples, "As the Father has loved me, so I love you".
As the Father loves Jesus, Jesus loves you. Do you know what he says? It's just so powerful. It's so powerful. 'Cause then he goes on, but it's just, like, it's, like, burst out at the end of it. Burst out at the end of it. "Abide in my love". Here's home. As the Father loved Christ, so Christ loves me. This is where I live. Sometimes I leave home and I get beaten up out there, but I want to tell you where home is. You know where your home address is? You wanna know where you reside? You wanna know where you live? You wanna know where you dwell? In the love of Christ. In the love of Christ.
Your home is the love of Christ. Your home is the love of Christ. I think we're living in a society that is uprooted. And we feel it, and it's insecure. And we don't know where we're goin' because we're not sure where we've been, and nothin' looks the same anymore. And he said, "Oh, you got a home, all right. This is your home. No matter where you work, no matter where you spend the night, no matter where you pull up your covers, this is home. As the Father has loved me, so I love you. Abide in my love".
I want you to see something. I want you to turn with me to a scripture that puts it in practical terms. Would you turn with me to Psalm 90? Psalm 90. How does this look on our feet? You know, when you've been around a while, you get to see how somethin' pans out over time. And so, you know, I'm past wantin' to teach things that don't make any difference whatsoever. They just make everybody feel good when they hear 'em. I'm just weary of it. I want you to prosper in the Spirit, and I want to prosper in the Spirit. I want to flourish in Christ. And so how does this apply?
I want you to leave this house tonight thinkin', "How does this thing get feet on it? How do I take this home? How do I walk in this to work"? Because we're supposed to walk in it because it says in Ephesians 5:1, not long after where we are in our text in Ephesians chapter 3, that we are to "be imitators of God, as dearly loved children. And walk in love". How do dearly-loved children walk? I'm just telling you that we would dramatically change just by going from a belief system that says, "Jesus loves me, this I hope". First thing some of us learned in Sunday school: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so".
Well, let me tell you why this is breaking down on us: because we have decided the Bible is not nearly as legitimate as we thought it was, and it certainly is out of date. It no longer applies, so set it to the side. So exactly now, where are we gonna get how loved we are? Because we're gonna distance ourselves from the scriptures. And so here's what we've got left: "Jesus loves me. I have no idea how I know, but, I mean, I've heard it a lot of times. I certainly hope that he does. Well, actually, I don't know it at all. Because I have nothing else to base it on. So I might as well have an imaginary friend who loves me. 'I love my imaginary friend, my imaginary friend loves me.'"
I mean, we also would do that. Then comes Psalm 90, verse 14. Look at this verse: "Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days". It doesn't convey we'll be happy every minute. I'm just simply telling you I'd like to go on the record to show, based on the Word of God, I believe that the happiest we can ever get on this planet is if the most deeply-rooted belief we have in our arsenal of roots is, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for my Bible tells me so".
That he loves me, just like the Word of God says he does, with a love that is so high I cannot see the end of it. So long it will never finish on me. So deep, so wide that it cannot be measured. That is what I know. What if, what if, what if we got up in the morning and went and sat before a God that reminded us again, "I so love you. I'm fascinated by you. My Spirit searches your depths. I've been thinkin' about you before I said, 'Let there be light.' You have dignity to me. You have gifting and you have calling, and you are thoroughly and completely loved".
What if by the time anybody else that lives in our house gets up, we already knew that? Where everything was just overflow from there. So glad somebody else told us that they loved us, but you know what? We weren't just this open canyon going, "Does anyone love me today? Anyone at all"? That is no way to live. You are already loved before you wake up. Before you have performed one single task, before you have got on one fleck of mascara, before you have made one dime, before you have made up your bed and kept the house straight, before you have got all your people under control, you were already completely loved by God.